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NOTES 



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PARABLES OF OUR LORD 



BY 

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, M. A., 

PROFESSOR OP DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; AUTHOR OF "NOTES 
ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD," ETC., ETC. 



SECOND AMERICAN FROM THE LAST ENGLISH EDITION 



ELEVENTH EDITION. 



NEW-YOBK : 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY 

4 43 <fc 44 5 BROADWAY. 
1S63. 






V* 




rl 



4, 



ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. 



That a work has reached a third edition in England, although one evidence 
of its merit, may not always be a safe or satisfactory reason for its republication 
in this country. But in regard to the volume herewith sent forth, the subject of 
which it treats is of such general interest, and the ability with which it has been 
prepared is so marked, and has been so universally acknowledged, that the pub- 
lishers cannot hesitate to believe they are doing good service to the cause of 
sound theological learning in making it accessible to a large class of American 
readers, who in all probability would not otherwise be able to possess it. 

The parable, whilst it is amongst the earliest modes of conveying truth to the 
mind, is at the same time the most effective. Never losing its vigor by age or 
repetition, it convinces sooner than logical argument, and strikes the imagination 
more readily than a living example.* From the fact that the parables of our 
Lord form a very considerable portion of his recorded teaching, and that he was 
accustomed by them to enforce the highest moral precepts, to illustrate important 
points of doctrine, and to give prophetical intimation of future events relating to 
himself and his mission, it is obvious that a competent knowledge of this portion 
of the Gospels, while it is essential to the Christian teacher, is of the greatest value 
to every member of the Church. And amply will these sacred fictions repay the 
most constant perusal. Attractive in the highest degree, even to childhood, 
while as yet like Samuel the little hearer " does not know the Lord, nor ir, the 
word of the Lord yet revealed to him" (1 Sam. iii. 7), they are the delight of 
-iper manhood, and never fail to offer to the attentive reader, beauties to admire. 

* Haec autem docendi ratio, quae facit ad illustrationern antiquis seculis plurimum 
adhibebatur. Ut Hieroglyphica Uteris, ita Parabolas argumentis erant antiquiores, 
Atque hodie etiam et semper, eximius est et fuit Parabolarum vigor ; cum nee ar- 
gumenta tarn perspicua nee vera exempla tarn apta. esse possint. — Bacoxi Dc Aug 
mentis Scientiarum, lib. 2, cap. 13. 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

principles to ponder, and examples to allure. Thus do they illustrate the wisdorr 
and benevolence of that Heavenly Teacher " who spake as never man spake," 
and exhibit a skill in the statement of moral principles to which no merely human 
intellect was ever equal, and a power and beauty of illustration which no poet or 
orator ever approached. 

In the present work the parables of our Lord are collected together, compared, 
and explained ; and by a judicious use of learning, and a fertile and happy em- 
ployment of illustrative comment, they are rendered eminently profitable " for doc- 
trine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness." " As a mere 
delight to the understanding," says Dr. Arnold, " I know of none greater than 
thus bringing together the different and scattered jewels of God's word, and 
arranging them in one perfect group. For whatever is the pleasure of contem- 
plating wisdom absolutely inexhaustible, employed on no abstract matter of 
science, but on our very own nature, opening the secrets of our hearts, and dis- 
closing the whole plan of our course in life ; of the highest wisdom clothed in a 
garb of most surpassing beauty ; such is the pleasure to the mere understanding 
of searching into the words of Christ, and blending them into the image of his 
perfect will respecting us." If the understanding can be thus delighted and 
improved, can it fail but that at the same time the heart will be made better ? 
Mr. Trench, while informing the understanding, has never neglected the oppor- 
tunity to excite the affections, to regulate them, and lead them to seek the blessed 
influences of that Holy Spirit which can alone purify them and fit them for the 
service of God. These " scattered jewels of God's word," of which Dr. Arnold 
speaks, he has brought together, and fixed them in a setting, not worthy indeed 
of their richness and lustre — what silver, or gold even, of human workmanship 
could possess such value ? — but the framework is yet skilfully constructed, and 
is wrought by a devout as well as a learned and earnest mind, and will hold its 
pearls of wisdom so that we may have the opportunity of gazing upon them in 
their concentrated form with delight and profit. 

Under these convictions of the importance of the subject and the successful 
manner in which it has oeen treated by Mr. Trench, this volume is now com* 
mended to the notice of American readers by the Publishers. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

CHAP. 

I. On the Definition of the Parable 
II. On Teaching by Parables 
III. On the Interpretation of Parables . 
IY. On other Parables besides those in the Scriptures 



PARABLES. 

I. The Sower . 

II. The Tares 

III. The Mustard Seed . 

IY. The Leaven 

y. The Hid Treasure . 

VI. The Pearl 

VII. The Draw Net 

VIII. The Unmerciful Servant 

IX. The Laborers in the Vineyard 

X. The Two Sons . 

XL The "Wicked Husbandmen . 

XII. The Marriage of the King's Son 

XIII. The Ten Virgins 

XIV. The Talents 
XV. The Seed Growing Secretly 

XVI. The Two Debtors 

XVII. The Good Samaritan 

XVIII. The Friend at Midnight 

XIX. The Rich Fool 

XX. The Barren Fig Tree . 

XXI. The Great Supper . 



PAQE 
, 9 

IT 

. 32 
46 



6T 

73 

91 
97 
103 
111 
115 
124 
138 
157 
162 
177 
200 
218 
233 
239 
251 
265 
271 
280 
291 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



XXII. The Lost Sheep 
XXIII. The Lost Piece of Money 
XXIY. The Prodigal Son 
XXV. The Unjust Steward . . 
XXVI. The Eich Man and Lazarus . 
XXVII. Unprofitable Servants . 
XXVIII. The Unjust Judge 
XXIX. The Pharisee and the Publican 
XXX. The Pounds 



PAGL 

30C 
311 
316 
345 
366 
391 
398 
408 
116 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



CHAPTER I. 

on the definition of the parable. 

Those writers who have had occasion to define a parable* do not appear 
to have found it an easy task to give such a satisfying definition aa 
should omit none of its distinguishing marks, and yet at the same time 
include nothing that was superfluous and merely accidental. Rather 
than attempt to add another to the many definitions already given,f I 
will seek to note briefly what seems to me to difference it from the fable, 
the allegory, and such other forms of composition as most closely border 
upon it. In the process of thus distinguishing it from those forms of 
composition, with which it is most nearly allied, and therefore most 

* Uapafio\ij, from. irapafiaKKeiv, projicere, objicere, i. e. rl rivi, to put forth one 
thing before or beside another ; and it is assumed, when irapafioXi] is used for para- 
ble, though not necessarily included in the word, that the purpose for which they 
are set side by side is that they may be compared one with the other. That this is 
not necessarily included is proved not only from the derivation, but from the fact 
that the word itself and the whole family of cognate words, as irapa&o\os, irapafi6\oes, 
parabolanus, are used in altogether a different sense, yet one growing out of the 
same root, in wMch the notion of putting forth is retained, but it is no longer for 
the purpose of comparison, which is only the accident, not of the essence of the 
word. Thus irapafioXos, qui objicit se praesentissimo vitas periculo, one who exposes 
his life, as those called parabolani, because they buried infected corpses at Alex- 
andria. 

t Many from the Greek Fathers are to be found in Suicer's TVies., s. v. irapafro\-q. 
Jerome, on Mark iv., defines it thus : Sermonem utilem, sub idonea figura expres- 
sum, et in recessu, continentem spiritualem aliquam admonitionem ; and he calls it 
finely in another place (Ad Algas.), Quasi umbra praevia veritatis. Among the 
moderns, linger (De Parab. Jesu Natura, p. 30) : Parabola Jesu est collatio per 
narratiunculam fictam, sed verisimilem, seri6 illustrans rem sublimiorem. Teel- 
man : Parabola est similitudo a rebus communibus et obviis desumta ad significan- 
dum quicquam spirituale et caeleste. Bengel : Parabola est oratio, quas per narra- 
tionem fictam sed verae similem, a rebus ad vitaa communis usum pertinentibug 
desumtam, veritates minus notas aut morales reprsesentat. 



10 ON THE DEFINITION 

likely to be confounded, and justifying the distinction, its essential pro 
perties will come before us much more clearly than I could hope to bring 
them in any other way. 

1. There are some who have confounded the parable with the JEso- 
pic fable, or drawn only a slight and hardly perceptible line of distinc- 
tion between them, as for instance Lessing and Storr, who affirm that 
the fable relates an event as having actually taken place at a certain 
time, while the parable only assumes it as possible. But not to say 
that examples altogether fail to bear them out in this assertion, the dif- 
ference is much more real, and far more deeply seated than this. The 
parable is constructed to set forth a truth spiritual and heavenly : this 
the fable, with all its value, , is not ; it is essentially of the earth, and 
never lifts itself above the earth. It never has a higher aim than to in- 
culcate maxims of prudential morality, industry, caution, foresight ; and 
these it will sometimes recommend even at the expense of the higher 
self-forgetting virtues. The fable just reaches that pitch of morality 
which the world will understand and approve. But it has no place in 
the Scripture,* and in the nature of things could have none, for the pur- 
pose of Scripture excludes it ; that purpose being the awakening of man 
to a consciousness of a divine original, the education of the reason, and 
of all which is spiritual in man, find not, except incidentally, the sharp- 
ening of the understanding. For the purposes of the fable, which are 
the recommendation and enforcement of the prudential virtues, the regu- 
lation of that in man which is instinct in beasts, in itself a laudable dis- 
cipline, but by itself leaving him only a subtler beast of the field, — for 
these purposes, examples and illustrations taken from the world beneath 
him are admirably suited. f That world is therefore the haunt and the 
main region, though by no means the exclusive one, of the fable : even 
when men are introduced, it is on the side by which they are connected 

* The two fables that are found in the Old Testament, that of the trees which 
would choose a king (Judg. ix. 8-15), and the brief one of the thistle and cedar 
(2 Kin. xiv. 9), may seem to impeach the universality of this rule, but do not so in 
fact. For in neither case is it God tha + is speaking, nor yet messengers of his, de- 
livering his counsel : but men, and from an earthly standing point, not a divine. 
Jotham seeks only to teach the men of Shechem their folly, not their sin, in making 
Abimelech king over them : the fable never lifting itself to the rebuke of sin, as it 
is sin ; this is beyond its region ; but only in so far as it is also folly. And Jehoash, 
in the same way, would make Amaziah see his presumption and pride, in challeng- 
ing him to the conflict, not thereby teaching him any moral lesson, but only giving 
evidence in the fable which he uttered, that his own pride was offended by the 
challenge of the Jewish king. 

t The greatest of all fables, the Reineke Fuchs, affords ample illustration of all 
this ; it is throughout a glorifying of cunning as the guide of life and the deliverer 
from all evil. 



OF THE PARABLE. H 

with that lower world ; while on the other hand, in the parable, the 
world of animals, though not wholly excluded, finds only admission in 
80 far as it is related to man. The relation of beasts to one another not 
being spiritual, can supply no analogies, can be in no wise helpful for 
declaring the truths of the kingdom of God. But all man's relations to 
man are spiritual, many of his relations to the world beneath him are sc 
also. His lordship over the animals, for instance, rests on his highei 
spiritual nature, is a dominion given to him from above ; therefore, as in 
the instance of the shepherd and sheep (John x.) and elsewhere, it will 
serve to image forth deeper truths of the relation of God to man. 

It belongs to this, the loftier standing point of the parable, that it 
should be deeply earnest, allowing itself therefore in no jesting nor rail- 
lery at the weaknesses, the follies, or the crimes of men.* Severe and 
indignant it may be, but it never jests at the calamities of men, however 
well deserved, and its indignation is that of holy love : while in this rail- 
lery, and in these bitter mockings, the fabulist not unfrequently in- 
dulges ;f — he rubs biting salt into the wounds of men's souls — it may be, 
perhaps it generally is, with a desire to heal those hurts, yet still in a 
very different spirit from that in which the affectionate Saviour of men 
poured oil and wine into the bleeding wounds of humanity. 

* Phaedrus' definition of the fable squares with that here given : 

Duplex libelli dos est, ut risum moveat, 
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet. 

•f As finds place, for instance, in La Fontaine's celebrated fable, — La Cigale ayant 
chante tout l'e*t6, — in which the ant, in reply to the petition of the grasshopper, 
which is starving in the winter, reminds it how it sung all the summer, and bids it 
to dance now. That fable, commending as it does foresight and prudence, prepara- 
tion against a day of need, might be compared for purposes of contrast to more 
than one parable urging the same, as Matt. xxv. 1 ; Luke xvi. 1 ; but with this 
mighty difference, that the fabulist has only worldly needs in his eye, it is only against 
these that he urges to lay up by timely industry a sufficient store ; while the Lord 
in his parables would have us to lay up for eternal life, for the day when not the 
bodies, but the souls that have nothing in store, will be naked and hungry, and 
miserable, — to prepare for ourselves a reception into everlasting habitations. The 
image which the French fabulist uses was very well capable of such higher applica- 
tion, had he been conscious of any such needs (see Prov. vi. 8, and on that verse, 
Coteler. Patt. Apos., v. i. p. 104, note 13, and Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. lxvi. 2). 
In Saadi's far nobler fable, The Ant and the Nightingale, from whence La Fon- 
taine's is undoubtedly borrowed, such application is distinctly intimated. Yon 
Hammer has in this view an interesting comparison between the French and the 
Persian fable (Gesch. d. schdn. Redek. Pers., p. 207).— The fable with which Hero- 
dotus (i. 141) relates Cyrus to have answered the Ionian ambassadors, when they 
offered him a late submission, is another specimen of the bitter irony, of which thia 
class of composition is often the vehicle. 



12 ON THE DEFINITION 

And yet again, there is another point of difference between the para* 
ble and the fable. While it can never be said that the fabulist is re- 
gardless of truth, since it is neither his intention to deceive, when he 
attributes language and discourse of reason to trees, and birds, and 
beasts, nor is any one deceived by him ; yet the severer reverence for 
truth, which is habitual to the higher moral teacher, will not allow him 
to indulge even in this sporting with the truth, this temporary suspen- 
sion of its laws, though upon agreement, or, at least, with tacit under- 
standing. In his mind, the creation of God, as it came from the Creator's 
hands, is too perfect, has too much of reverence owing to it, to be repre- 
sented otherwise than as it really is. The great Teacher by parables, 
therefore, allowed himself in no transgression of the -established laws of 
nature — in nothing marvellous or anomalous ; he presents to us no speak- 
ing trees or reasoning beasts,* and we should be at once conscious of an 
unfitness in his so doing. 

2. The parable is different from the mythus, inasmuch as in the 
mythus, the truth and that which is only the vehicle of the truth are 
wholly blended together : and the consciousness that there is any dis- 
tinction between them, that it is possible to separate the one from the 
other, belongs only to a later and more reflective age than that in which 
the mythus itself had birth, or those in which it was heartily believed. 
The mythic narrative presents itself not merely as the vehicle of the 
truth, but as itself being the truth ; while in the parable, there is a per- 
fect consciousness in all minds, of the distinctness between form and 
essence, shell and kernel, the precious vessel and yet more precious 
wine which it contains. There is also the mythus of another class, the 
artificial product of a later self-conscious age, of which many inimitable 
specimens are to be found in Plato, devised with distinct intention of 
embodying some important spiritual truth, of giving an outward sub- 
sistence to an idea. But these, while they have many points of resem- 
blance with the parable, yet claim no credence for themselves either as 
actual or possible (in this differing from the parable), but only for the 

* Klinckhardt {De Horn. Div. et Laz., p. 2) : Fabula aliquod vitre communis 
morumque, praeceptum simplici et nonnunquam jocosa oratione illustrat per exem- 
plum plcrumque contra veram naturam fictum : parabola autem scntentiam subli- 
miorem (ad res divinas pertinentem) simplici quidem sed gravi et seria oratione 
illustrat per exemplum ita excogitatum ut cum rerum natura maxime convenire 
videatur. And Cicero {De Invent., 1. 19) : Fabula est in qua ncc verse nee verisi- 
miles res continentur. But of the parable Origen says, "Ean iraoaPoK-r), \6yos <wj 
*epl y>voixevov, fi^ yivofxtvov (x\v Kara, rb farSt*, duva^uov 5e yevea&ai. There is then 
some reason for the fault which Calov finds with Grotius, though he is only too 
ready to find fault, for commonly using the terms fabula and fabetta in speaking 
of our Lord's parables, terms which certainly have an unpleasant sound in the ear. 



OF THE PARABLE. 13 

truth which they embody and declare. The same is the case when upon 
some old legend or myth that has long been current, there is thrust some 
spiritual significance, clearly by an afterthought ; in which case it per- 
ishes in the letter that it may live in the spirit ; all outward subsistence 
is denied to it, for the sake of asserting the idea which it is made to con- 
tain. To such a process,- as is well known, the latter Platonists submit- 
ted the old mythology of Greece. For instance, Narcissus falling in love 
with his own image in the water-brook, and pining there, was the sym- 
bol of man casting himself forth into the world of shows and appearances, 
and expecting to find the good that would answer to his nature there, 
but indeed finding only disappointment and death. It was their mean- 
ing hereby to vindicate that mythology from charges of absurdity or 
immorality — to put a moral life into it, whereby it should maintain its 
ground against the new life of Christianity, though indeed they were 
only thus hastening the destruction of whatever lingering faith in it 
there yet survived in the minds of men. 

3. The parable is also clearly distinguishable from the proverb,* 
though it is true that in a certain degree, the words are used inter- 
changeably in the New Testament, and as equivalent the one to the other. 
Thus " Physician heal thyself" (Luke iv. 23), is termed a parable, being 
more strictly a proverb ; so again, when the Lord had used that proverb, 
probably already familiar to his hearers,! " If the blind lead the blind, 
both shall fall in the ditch," Peter said, "Declare unto us this parable" 
(Matt. xv. 14, 15) ; and again, Luke v. 36 is a proverb or proverbial 
expression, rather than a parable, which name it bears. So, upon the 
other hand, those are called proverbs in St. John, which, if not strictly 
parables, yet claim much closer affinity to the parable than to the pro- 
verb, being in fact allegories : thus Christ's setting forth of his relations 
to his people under those of a shepherd to his sheep, is termed a " pro- 
verb," though our translators, holding fast to the sense rather than to 
the letter, have rendered it a " parable." (John x. 6, compare xvi. 25, 
29.J) It is not difficult to explain how this interchange of the two words 
should have come to pass. Partly from the fact which has been noted 
by many, of there being but one word in the Hebrew to signify both par- 
able and proverb ; which circumstance must have had considerable in- 
fluence upon writers accustomed to think in that language, and itseh 

* Uupoifxia, that is, imp' otfiov, a trite, wayside saying, = xapoSm. But some derive 
It from 0^117, a tale, or poem. Yet Passow's explanation of the latter word shows 
that at the root the two derivations are the same. — See Suicer's TVies., s. v. Trapoi/xla. 

t It is current at least now in the East, as I find it in a collection of Turkish 
Proverbs, in Von Hammer's Morgenl. Klcelbatt, p. 63. 

% The word irapaf}o\ij never occurs in St, John, nor vapoifxla in the three firs! 
Evangelists. 



14 ON THE DEFINITION 

arose from the parable and proverb being alike enigmatical and some* 
what obscure forms of speech, " dark sayings," speaking a part of their 
meaning and leaving the rest to be inferred.* This is evidently true of 
the parable, and in fact no less so of the proverb. For though such 
proverbs as have become the heritage of an entire people, and have ob- 
tained universal currency, may be, or rather may have become, plain 
enough, yet in themselves proverbs are most often enigmatical, claiming 
a quickness in detecting latent affinities, and oftentimes a knowledge 
which shall enable to catch more or less remote allusions, for their right 
comprehension. f And yet further to explain how the terms should be 
often indifferently used, — the proverb, though not necessarily, is yet 
very commonly parabolical,! that is, it rests upon some comparison either 
expressed or implied, as for example, 2 Pet. ii. 22. Or again, the pro- 
verb is often a concentrated parable, for instance that one above quoted, 
" If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch," might evi- 
dently be extended with ease into a parable ; and in like manner, not 
merely many proverbs might thus be beaten out into fables, but they are 
not unfrequently allusions to or summings up in a single phrase of some 
well-known fable. § 

4. It only remains to consider wherein the parable differs from the 
allegory, which it does in form rather than in essence : there being in 
the allegory, an interpenetration of the thing signifying and the thing 
signified, the qualities and properties of the first being attributed to the 
last, and the two thus blended together, instead of being kept quite dis- 
tinct and placed side by side, as is the case in the parable. || Thus, John 



* So we find our Saviour contrasts the speaking in proverbs and parables (John 
xvi. 25), with the speaking plainly, irafiprio-iq. (jrav pruxa), every word. 

t For instance, to take two common Greek proverbs : Xpvo-ea x aKK *' l0> v would 
require some knowledge of the Homeric narrative, Bods eVl yXcacro-ns, of Attic 
moneys. The obscurity that is in proverbs, is sufficiently shown by the fact of such 
books as the Adagia of Erasmus, in which he brings all his learning to bear on 
their elucidation, and yet leaves many of them without any satisfactory explanation. 
And see also the Paramiographi Grcsci (Oxf. 1836), p. xi.-xvi. 

:|: It is not necessarily, as some have affirmed, a \6yos eVx^aTiayzeVos, for in- 
stance 'Ex&p&v fttivpa tiwpa, or T\vki>s awe'ipy irSxefios, and innumerable others are 
expressed without figure ; but very many are also parabolical, and generally the 
best, and those which have become most truly popular. 

§ Quintilian says, Uapoifxia fabella brevior . . . Parabola longius res qiue compar 
rentur repetere solet. On the distinction between the irapafio\.r) and irapoifjiia, there 
are some good remarks in Hase's Thes. Nov. Theol. Philolog., v. 2, p. 503. 

|| Thus Lowth (De Sac. Poes. Hcb., Pra.1. 10): His denique* subjicienda est 
quasi lex quajdam parabola), nimirum ut per omnia sibi constet, neque arcessitis 
propria admista habeat. In quo mult&m differt a. prima allegorise specie, qua a 
iimplici metaphors paulatim procedens, non semper continue excludit proprium, a 



OF THE PARABLE. 15 

xv. 1-8, " I am the true vine. &c," is throughout an allegory, as there 
are two allegories scarcely kept apart from one another, John x. 1-16, 
the first, in which the Lord sets himself forth as the Door of the sheep, 
the second, as the good Shepherd. So, u Behold the Lamb of God," is 
an allegorical, " He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter," a parabolical 
expression.* The allegory needs not, as the parable, an interpretation 
to be brought to it from without, since it contains its interpretation 
within itself, and, as the allegory proceeds, the interpretation proceeds 
hand in hand with it, or at least never falls far behind it ;f and thus the 
allegory stands to the metaphor, as the more elaborate and long drawn 
out composition of the same kind, in the same relation that the parable 
does to the isolated comparison or simile. And as many proverbs are, 
as we have seen, concise parables, in like manner many also are brief 
allegories. For instance the following, which is an Eastern proverb, — 
u This world is a carcass, and they who gather round it are dogs," — does 
in fact interpret itself as it goes along, and needs not therefore that an 
interpretation be brought to it from without ; while it is otherwise with 
the proverb spoken by our Lord, u Wheresoever the carcass is there 
will the eagles be gathered together," — this gives no help to its own 
interpretation from within, and is a saying, of which the darkness and 
difficulty have been abundantly witnessed by the many interpretations 
of it which have been proposed. 

To sum up all then, the parable differs from the fable, moving as it 
does in a spiritual world, and never transgressing the actual order of 
things natural. — from the mythus, there being in the latter an uncon- 



propriis in translata paulatim illapsa, nee minus leniter ex translatis in propria per 
gradus quosdam se recipiens. 

* Thus, Isai. v. 1-6 is a parable, of which the explanation is separately given, 
ver. 7 ; while on the other hand, Ps. lxxx. 8-16, resting on the same image, is an 
allegory ; since, for instance, the casting out of the heathen, that the vine might he 
planted, is an intermingling of the thing signifying and that signified, wherein the 
note that distinguishes the allegory from the parable consists, as Quintilian {Inst. 
viii. 3, 77) observes ; for having defined the allegory, he proceeds : In omni antem 
vapaBoXfj aut praecedit similitudo, res sequitur, aut praecedit res, similitudo sequi- 
tur ; sed interim libera et separata est. The allegory then is translntio, the parable 
caflatio.— Since writing the above I find that Bishop Lowth (De Sac. Poes. Hab., 
Prcd. 10) has adduced these same examples from Isaiah and the Psalmist to illus- 
trate the distinction. 

f Of all this the Pilgrim's Progress affords ample illustration, "Interpreter" 
appearing there as one of the persons of the allegory. Mr. Hallam (Liter, of 
Europe, v. 4, p. 553) mentions this as a certain drawback upon the book, that, "in 
his language, Bunyan sometimes mingles the signification too much with the fable ; 
we might be perplexed between the imaginary and the real Christian:" but is not 
this of the very nature of the allegorical fable 1 



16 ON THE DEFINITION OF THE PAHABLE. 

Bcious blending of the deeper meaning with the outward symbol, the 
two remaining separate and separable in the parable, — from the proverb, 
inasmuch as it is longer carried out, and not merely accidentally and 
occasionally, but necessarily figurative,— from the allegory, comparing 
as it does one thing vnth another, at the same time preserving them 
apart as an inner and an outer, not transferring, as does the allegory, 
the properties and qualities and relations of one to the other. 



CHAPTER II. ■ 

ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

However our Lord may on one or more occasions have made use of 
this manner of teaching by parables, with the intention of withdrawing; 
from certain of his hearers the knowledge of truths, which they were- 
unworthy or unfit to receive ;* yet we may assume as certain that his; 

* Macrobius (Somn. Scip., 1. i. c. 2) : Figuris defendentibus a vilitate secretum.. 
No one can deny that this was sometimes the Lord's purpose, who is not prepared; 
to do great violence to his words, as recorded by the three first Evangelists. 
(Matt. xiii. 10-15 ; Mark iv. 11, 12 ; Luke viii. 9, 10.) When we examine the words, 
themselves, we find them in St. Mark to wear their strongest and severest aspect. 
There and in St. Luke, the purpose of speaking in parables is said to .be that' 
(ha, which can be nothing else than reAi/ccDs) seeing they might not see ; while in 
St. Matthew he speaks in parables, because (on) they seeing see not. In Matthew 
and Mark it is said to be so done, lest (^ir-ore) at any time they should see with 
their eyes; while in Luke this part of the' sentence is entirely wanting. The 
attempt has been made to evacuate 'iva and ^irore of their strength, these being 
clearly the key- words ; thus ha=0Ti, and ^7rore=efrroTe, <: if perchance ;" to jus- 
tify which last use, reference is made to 2 Tim. ii. 25, fi^irore 8<arj avrols 6 Qebs ,uc- 
T&voiav, " if God peradventure will give them repentance ;" so' that thus we should 
get back to the old meaning, that the aim of his teaching by parables was, because 
they could not understand in any other way, and if perchance the Lord would give 
them repentance. Now there is no question that such might be the sense given i 
to fi-f}iroT€, but even if the 6Vt could be as successfully dealt with, which it certainly 
cannot, there is still the passage of Isaiah in the way. "Where would then be the 
fulfilment of his prophecy 1 There can be no doubt that the Prophet there speaks 
of a penal blindness, as even Gesenius allows, a punishment of the foregoing sins- 
of his people, and namely, this punishment, that they should be unable to recog- 
nize what was divine in his mission and character ; which prophecy had its ulti- 
mate and crowning fulfilment, when the Jewish people were so darkened by 
previous carnal thoughts and works, that they could see no glory and no beauty 
in Christ, could recognize nothing of divine in the teaching or person of him who 
■was God manifest in the flesh. It is not that by the command^ " Make the heart of 
this people fat" (Isai. vi. 10), we need understand as though any peculiar harden- 
ing then passed upon them, but that the Lord having constituted as the righteous 
law of his moral government, that sin should produce darkness of heart and moral! 
insensibility, declared that he would allow the law in their case to take its course, 
2 



18 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

general aim* was not different from that of others who have used this 
method of teaching, and who have desired thereby to make clearer^ 
either to illustrate or to prove, the truths which they had in hand : — I 
say either to illustrate or to prove ; for the parable, or other analogy to 
spiritual truth appropriated from the world of nature or man, is not 
merely illustration, but also in some sort proof. It is not merely that 
these analogies assist to make the truth intelligible, or, if intelligible 
before, present it more vividly to the mind, which is all that some will 
allow them. J Their power lies deeper than this, in the harmony un- 
consciously felt by all men, and by deeper minds continually recognized 



and so also with this latter generation ; even as that law is declared in the latter 
half of Rom. i., to have taken its course with the Gentile world; in Augustine's 
awful words, Deus solus magnus, lege infatigabili spargens poenales caecitates super 
illicitas cupidines ; who says also in another place, Quorundam peccatorum perpe- 
trandorum facilitas, poena est aliorum praecedentium. The fearful curse of sin is 
that it ever has the tendency to reproduce itself, that he who sows in sin reaps in 
spiritual darkness, which delivers him over again to worse sin; all which is won- 
derfully expressed by Shakspeare ; — 

For when we in our viciousness grow hard, 

Oh misery on't, the wise gods seal our eyes, 

In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us 

Adore our errors, laugh at us, while we strut 

To our confusion. 

* Bacon has noted this double purpose of parables (De Sap. Vet.) ; Duplex 
apud homines repertus est atque increbuit parabolarum usus, atque quod magis 
mirum sit, ad contraria adhibetur. Faciunt enim parabolae ad involucrum et ve- 
lum, faciunt etiam ad lumen et illustrationem. See also De Augm. Scient., 1. 2. c. 13 ; 
and the remarkable passage from Stobaeus, on the teaching of Pythagoras, quoted 
in Potter's edit, of Clemens Alexandrinus, p. 676 ; note. 

f This has been acknowledged on all sides, equally by profane and sacred wri- 
ters ; thus Quintilian (Inst. viii. 3, 72.) : Prasclare vero ad inferendam rebus lucem 
repertae sunt similitudines. And Seneca styles them, adminicula nostras imbecili- 
tatis. Again, they have been called, Mediae scientiam inter et ignorantiam. The 
author of the treatise ad Herennium : Similitudo sumitur aut ornandi causa aut 
probandi, aut apertius docendi, aut ante oculos ponendi. Tertullian. (De Resur. 
Car., c. 33), expressly denies of parables, that they darken the light of the Gospel 
'(obunibrant Evangelii lucem). See also the quotation from Chrysostom in Sui- 
cer's T/ies. s. v. irapafio\T)> and Basil explains it, \6yos bxpe\i/j.os /xer' iirutptyevs 
nerplas, with that moderate degree of concealment which shall provoke, not such 
as shall repel or disappoint, inquiry. The Lord, says Chrysostom (Horn. 69 in 
Matth.), spoke in parables, ipe&ifap ical Sieyelpw, or as he expresses it elsewhere 
(De Prec, Serm. 2), that we might dive down into the deep sea of spiritual know- 
ledge, from thence to ( fetch up pearls and precious stones. 

| So Stellini : Ita enim fere comparati sumus, ut cum impressionis vivacitate 
notionis evidentiam confundamus, eaque clarius intelligere nos arbetremur, quibus 
imaginandi perculsa vis acrius est, et quae novitate aliqua commendantur, ea stabi- 
liora sunt ad diuturnitatem memoriae, neque vetustate ulla consenescunt. 



ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 19 

and plainly perceived, between the natural and spiritual worlds, so that 
analogies from the first are felt to be something more than illustrations, 
happily but yet arbitrarily chosen. They are arguments, and may be 
alleged as witnesses ; the world of nature being throughout a witness 
for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of 
the same root, and being constituted for that very end. All lovers of 
truth readily acknowledge these mysterious harmonies, and the force of 
arguments derived from them. To them the things on earth are copies 
of the things in heaven. They know that the earthly tabernacle is 
made after the pattern of things seen in the mount (Exod. xxv. 40 ; 
1 Chron. xxviii. 11, 12) ;* and the question suggested by the Angel in 
Milton is often forced upon their meditations, — 

" What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein 
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought T'f 

For it is a great misunderstanding of the matter to think of these as 
happily, but yet arbitrarily, chosen illustrations, taken with a skilful 
selection from the great stock and storehouse of unappropriated images ; 
from whence it would have been possible that the same skill might have 
selected others as good or nearly as good. Rather they belong to one 
another, the type and the thing typified, by an inward necessity ; they 
were linked together long before by the law of a secret affinity. £ It 
is not a happy accident which has yielded so wondrous an analogy as 
that of husband and wife, to set forth the mystery of Christ's relation to 

* See Iren.eus, Con. Hcer., 1. 4, c. 14, § 3. 

f Many are the sayings of a like kind among the Jewish Cabbalists. Thus in 
the book Sohar, Quodcunque in terra est, id etiam in caelo est, et nulla jes tarn 
exigua est in mundo, quae non alii similii, quae in caslo est, correspondeat. In 
Gfrorer's Urchristenthum, v. 2. p. 26-30, and Bahr's Symb. d. Mos. Cult., v. 1, p. 109, 
many like passages are quoted. No one was fuller of this than Tertullian : see his 
magnificent words on the resurrection (De Res. Cam., c. 12). All things here, he 
says, are witnesses of a resurrection, all things in nature are prophetic outlines of 
divine operations, God not merely speaking parables, but doing them, (talia divina- 
rum virium lineamenta, non minus parabolis operato Deo quam locuto.) And 
again, De Animd, c. 43, the activity of the soul in sleep is for him at once an argu- 
ment and an illustration which God has provided us. of its not being tied to the 
body to perish with it : Dens .... manum porrigens fidei, facilius adjuvandae- per 
imagines et paraboles, sicut sermonum, ita et rerum. 

£ Out of a true sense of this has grown our use of the word likely. There is a 
confident expectation in the minds of men of the reappearance in higher spheres, 
of the same laws and relations which they have recognized in lower ; and thus that 
which is like is also likely or probable. Bntler's Analogy is just the unfolding, as 
he himself declares at the beginning, in one particular line of this thought, that tha 
like is also the likely. 



20 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

his elect Church. There is far more in it than this : the earthly rela- 
tion is indeed but a lower form of the heaveViy, on which it rests, and 
of which it is the utterance. When Christ spoke to Nicodemus of a 
new birth, it was not merely because birth into this natural world was 
the most suitable figure that could be found for the expression of that 
spiritual act which, without any power of our own, is accomplished 
upon us when we are brought into God's kingdom ; but all the circum- 
stances of this natural birth had been pre-ordained to bear the burden 
of so great a mystery. The Lord is king, not borrowing this title from 
the kings of the earth, but having lent his own title to them — and not 
the name only, but so ordering, that all true rule and government upon 
earth, with its righteous laws, its stable ordinances, its punishment and 
its grace, its majesty and its terror, should tell of Him and of his king- 
dom which ruleth over all — so that " kingdom of God " is not in fact a 
figurative expression, but most literal : it is rather the earthly kingdoms 
and the earthly kings that are figures and shadows of -the true. And 
as in the world of man and human relations, so also is it in the world of 
nature. The untended soil which yields thorns and briers as its natural 
harvest is a permanent type and enduring parable of man's heart, which 
has been submitted to the same curse, and without a watchful spiritual 
husbandry will as surely put forth its briers and its thorns. The weed? 
that will mingle during the time of growth with the corn, and yet art 
separated from it at the last, tell ever one and the same tale of the 
present admixture, and future sundering of the righteous and the 
wicked. The decaying of the insignificant unsightly seed in the earth y 
and the rising up out of that decay and death, of the graceful stalk and 
the fruitful ear, contain evermore the prophecy of the final resurrec- 
tion, even as this is itself in its kind a resurrection, — the same process 
at a lower stage, — the same power putting itself forth upon meaner 
things. 

Of course it will be always possible for those who shrink from con- 
templating a higher world-order than that imperfect one around them, — 
and this, because the thought of such would rebuke their own imper- 
fection and littleness — who shrink too from a witness for God so neas 
them as even that imperfect order would render — it will be possible for 
them to say it is not thus, but that our talk of heavenly things is only a 
transferring of earthly images and relations to them ; — that earth is not 
a shadow of heaven, but heaven, such at least as we conceive it, a dream 
of earth ; that the names Father and Son for instance (and this is Arian- 
ism) are only improperly used and in a secondary sense when applied to 
Divine Persons, and then are terms so encumbered with difficulties and 
contradictions that' they had better not be used at all; that; we do nol 






ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. %\ 

find and recognize heavenly things in their earthly counterparts, but only 
dexterously adapt them. This denial will be always possible, and has 
a deeper root than that it can be met with argument ; yet the lover of a 
truth which shall be loftier than himself will not be moved from his faith 
that however man may be the measure of all things here, yet God is 
the measure of man, — that the same Lord who sits upon his throne in 
heaven, does with the skirts of his train fill his temple upon earth — that 
these characters of nature which every where meet his eye are not a 
common but a sacred writing — that they are hieroglyphics of God : and 
he counts this his blessedness, that he finds himself in the midst of such, 
and because in the midst of them, therefore never without admonish- 
ment and teaching. 

For such is in truth the condition of man : around him is a sensuous 
world, yet not one which need bring him into bondage to his senses, but 
so framed as, if he will use it aright, continually to lift him above itself 
— a visible world to make known the invisible things of God, a ladder 
leading him up to the contemplation of heavenly truth. And this truth 
he shall encounter and make his own, not in fleeing from his fellows and 
their works and ways, but in the mart, on the wayside, in the field — 
not by stripping himself bare of all relations, but rather recognizing these 
as instruments through which he is to be educated into the knowledge 
of higher mysteries ; and so dealing with them in reverence, seeking 
by faithfulness to them in their lower forms to enter into their yet deeper 
significance — entertaining them, though they seem but common guests, 
and finding that he has unawares entertained Angels. And thus, besides 
his revelation in words, God has another and an elder, and one indeed 
without which it is inconceivable how that other could be made, for from 
this it appropriates all its signs of communication. This entire moral 
and visible world from first to last, with its kings and its subjects, its 
parents and its children, its sun and its moon, its sowing and its harvest, 
its light and its darkness, its sleeping and its waking, its birth and 
its death, is from beginning to end a mighty parable, a great teaching 
of supersensuous truth, a help at once to our faith and to our under- 
standing. 

It is true that men are ever in danger of losing " the key of know- 
ledge" which should open to them the portals of this palace : and then 
instead of a prince in a world of wonder that is serving him, man moves 
in the midst of this world, alternately its taskmaster and its drudge. 
Such we see him to become at the two poles of savage and falsely-culti- 
vated life — his inner eye darkened, so that he sees nothing, his inner 
ear heavy, so that there come no voices from nature unto him: and 
indeed in all, save only in the one Man, there is more or less of the 



22 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

dulled 2ar, and the filmed eye. There is none to whom nature tells out 
all that she has to tell, and as constantly as she would be willing to tell 
it. Now the whole of Scripture, with its ever-recurring use of figura- 
tive language, is a re-awakening of man to the mystery of nature, a 
giving back to him the key of knowledge, the true signatura rerum : 
and this comes out, as we might expect, in its highest form, but by no 
means exclusively, in those which by pre-eminence we call the parables. 
They have this point of likeness with the miracles, that those too were 
a calling heed to powers which were daily going forward in the midst of 
men, but which, by their frequency and their orderly repetition, that 
ought to have kindled the' more admiration, had become wonder-works 
no more, had lost the power of exciting attention, until men had need to 
be startled anew to the contemplation of the energies which were ever 
working among them. In like manner the parables were a calling of 
attention to the spiritual facts which underlie all processes of nature, 
all institutions of human society, and which, though unseen, are the 
true ground and support of these. Christ moved in the midst of what 
seemed to the eye of sense an old and worn-out world, and it evidently 
became new at his touch ; for it told to man now the inmost secrets of 
his being : he found that it answered with strange and marvellous cor- 
respondencies to another world within him, — that oftentimes it helped 
to the birth great thoughts of his heart, which before were helplessly 
struggling to be born, — that of these two worlds, without him and within, 
each threw a light and a glory on the other. 

For on this rests the possibility of a real teaching by parables, such 
a teaching as, resting upon a substantial ground, shall not be a mere 
building on the air, or painting on a cloud, — that the world around us is 
a divine world, that it is God's world, the world of the same God who is 
teaching and leading us into spiritual truth ; that the horrible dream of 
Gnostic and Manichaean, who would set a great gulf between the worlds 
of nature and of grace, seeing this from a good, but that from an im- 
perfect or an evil power, is a lie ; that being originally God's, it is a 
sharer in his great redemption. And yet this redeemed world, like 
man, is in part redeemed only in hope : it is not, that is, in the present 
possession, but only in the assured certainty, of a complete deliverance. 
For this too we must not leave out of sight, that nature, in its present 
state, like man himself, contains but a prophecy of its coming glory ; — 
it '' groaneth and travaileth ;" it cannot tell out all its secrets ; it has a 
presentiment of something, which it is not yet, but which hereafter it 
shall be. It too is suffering under our curse : yet even thus, in its very 
imperfection wonderfully serving us, since thus it has apter signs and 
more fitting symbols to declare to us our disease and our misery, and 



ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 23 

the processes of their healing and removing ; — symbols not merely of 
God's grace and power, but also of man's sins and wretchedness : it has 
its sores and its wounds, its storms and its wildernesses, its lion and its 
adder, by these interpreting to us death all that leads to death, no less 
than by its more beneficent workings life and all that tends to the re- 
storing and maintaining of life. 

But while thus it has this merciful adaptation to our needs, not the 
less does it, in this its fallen estate, come short of its full purpose and 
meaning : it fails in part to witness for a divine order, as the philoso- 
phic poet, whose eye was mainly directed to this, its disorder and defi- 
ciency, exclaimed, 

fanta stat praedita culpa : 

it does not give always a clear witness, nor speak out in distinct Accents, 
of God's truth and love. Of these it is oftentimes the inadequate ex- 
pression — yea, sometimes seems not to declare them at all, but rather in 
volcano and in earthquake, in ravenous beasts, and in poisonous herbs, to 
tell of strife and discord and disharmony, and all the woful consequences 
of the fall. But one day it will be otherwise : one day it will be trans- 
lucent with the divine Idea which it embodies, and which even now, 
despite these dark spots, shines through it so wondrously. For no doubt 
the end and consummation will be, not the abolition of this nature, but 
the glorifying of it, — that which is now nature (natura), always, as the 
word expresses it, striving and struggling to the birth, will then be 
indeed born. The new creation will be as the glorious child born out 
of the world-long throes and anguish of the old. It will be as the snake 
casting its wrinkled and winter skin ; the old world not abolished, but 
putting off its soiled work-day garments, and putting on its holiday ap- 
parel for the great Sabbath which shall have arrived at last. Then, 
when it too shall have put off its bondage of corruption, shall be deli- 
vered from whatever is now overlaying it, all that it has at present of 
dim and contradictory and perplexing shall disappear. This nature, 
too, shall be a mirror in which God will perfectly glass himself, for it 
shall tell of nothing but the marvels of his wisdom and power and love. 

But at present, while this natural world, through its share in man's 
fall, has won in fitness for the expression of the sadder side of man's 
condition, the imperfection and evil that cling to him and beset him, it 
has in some measure lost in fitness for the expressing of the higher. It 
possesses the best, yet oftentimes inadequate, helps for this. These 
human relationships, and this whole constitution of things earthly, share 
in the shortcoming that cleaves to all which is of the earth. Obnoxious 
to change, tainted with sin, shut in within brief limits by decay and 



24 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

death, they are often weak and temporary, when they have to set forth 
things strong and eternal. A sinful element is evidently mingled with 
them, while they yet appear as symbols of what is entirely pure and 
heavenly. They break down under the weight that is laid upon them. 
The father chastens, after his own pleasure, instead of wholly for the 
child's profit; in this unlike that heavenly Father, whose character 
he is to set forth. The seed which is to set forth the word of God, that 
Word which liveth and abideth for ever, itself decays and perishes at 
last. Festivals, so frequently the image of the pure joy of the kingdom, 
of the communion of the faithful with their Lord and with one another, 
will often, when here celebrated, be mixed up with much that is carnal, 
and they come to their close in a few hours. There is something 
exactly analogous to all this in the typical or parabolical personages of 
Scripture — the men that are to set forth the Divine Man. Through 
their sins, through their infirmities, yea, through the necessary limita- 
tions of their earthly condition, they are unable to carry the corre- 
spondencies completely out. Sooner or later they break down ; and 
very often even the part which they do sustain, they sustain it not for long. 
Thus, for instance, few would deny the typical character of Solomon. 
His kingdom of peace, the splendor of his reign, his wisdom, the tem- 
ple which he reared, all point to a greater whom he foreshowed. Yet 
this gorgeous forecasting of the coming glory is vouchsafed to us only 
for an instant ; it is but a glimpse of it we catch. Even before his 
reign is done, all is beginning to dialimn again, to lose the distinctness 
of its outline, the brightness of its coloring. His wisdom is darkened, 
the perfect peace of his land is no more ; and the gloom on every side 
encroaching warns us that this is but the image, not the very substance, 
of the things. 

Again we see some men, in whom there is but a single point in their 
history which brings them into typical relation with Christ ; such was 
Jonah, the type of the Resurrection : or persons whose lives at one mo- 
ment and another seem suddenly to stand out as symbolic ; but then 
sink back so far that we almost doubt whether we may dare to consider 
them as such at all, and in whose case the attempt to carry out the 
resemblance into greater detail would involve in infinite embarrassment. 
Samson will at once suggest himself as one of those. It is scarcely 
possible to believe that something more was not meant than is contained 
in the letter when out of the eater he brought forth meat, and out of the 
strong sweetness (Judg. xiv. 14), or when he wrought a mightier de- 
liverance for Israel through his death than he had wrought in his .ife 
(Judg. xvi. 30). Yet we hesitate how far we may proceed. And so it 
is in every case, for somewhere or other every man is a liar: he ia 
false, that is, to the divine idea, which he was meant to embody, and 



OJST TEACHING BY PARABLES. 25 

fails to bring it out in all the fulness of its perfection. So that of the 
truths of God in the language of men (which language of course in- 
cludes man's acts as well as his words), of these sons of heaven married 
to the daughters of earth, it may truly he said, "we have this treasure 
in earthen vessels." And it must only be looked for, that somewhere 
or other the earthen vessel will appear, that the imperfection which 
cleaves to our forms of utterance, to men's words and to their works, 
will make itself felt either in the misapprehensions of those to whom the 
language is addressed (as John iii. 11), or by the language itself, 
though the best that human speech could supply, — by the men them- 
selves, though the noblest, it may be, of their age and race, — yet 
failing to set forth the divine truth in all its fulness and complete- 
ness.* 

No doubt it was a feeling, working more or less consciously, of the 
dangers and drawbacks that attend all our means of communication, a 
desire also to see eye to eye, or, as St. Paul terms it, face vO facef 

* It is now rather 4k p.£povs, 4v alviyfian, St' 4ff6irrpov (1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12), 4v ira- 
poi/xiais (John xvi. 25). Cf. Bernard, In Cant, Serm. 31. 8. A Persian mystical 
poet has caught this truth, which he has finely expressed. (See Tholuck's Blu- 
t/iensamm. aus d. Morgenl. Mystik, p. 215.) 

Die Sinnenwelt ein Schatte ist der Geistwelt, 
Herab von dieser jener Nahrunsgmilch quellt. 
Gefuhle sind gefangene Monarchen, 
Die in der Worte Kerker sich verbargen. 
Tritt das Unendliche in's Herz des Weisen, 
Muss flugs hinab er zum Verstande reisen. 
Der muss die Schattenbilder ihm gewahren, 
Damit er konn' Unendliches erklaren. 
Doch nimmer ist das Abbild je vollkommen, 
Nur Selbstverstdndniss kann dir wahrhaft frommen. 
Denn ziehst aus jedem Bild du Consequenzen, 
Musst hier du Vieles wegthun, dort erganzen. 

f John Smith {Select Disc, p. 159), observes that the later Platonists had three 
terms to distinguish the different degrees of divine knowledge. ko.t 4tnaTT)in)v, tcarh 
voi\<riv and Kara irapovaiav. If we assumed these into Christian theology, — and 
they very nearly agree with the threefold division of St. Bernard (De Consid., 1. 5, 
c. 8), the opinio, the fides, and the intellectus (intuition), — we might say of the 
first, that it. is common to all men, being merely notional, knowing about God : the 
second is the privilege of the faithful now, the knowing God ; the third, the avro- 
<pdveia of the same school, the Arcanum facierum of the Jewish doctors, will be 
their possession in the world to come, the seeing God, the reciprocity of which is 
finely indicated by Augustine, when he terms it, Yidere Yidentem. It was this. 
according to many of the Jewish interpreters, which Moses craved when he said. 
" I beseech Thee, show me thy glory," but which was denied him, as being impos- 
sible for man in this present life ; " Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no 
man see me, and live." (Exod. xxxiii. 18-20.) Yet he too, they say, came nearer 
to this than any other of the Lord's prophets. (See Meuschen's N. T. ex Talm. 
illusti.,T). 373.) It is a striking Mohammedan tradition, according to which the 



26 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

(1 Cor. xiii. 12), which caused the mystics to press with such earnest- 
ness and frequency that we should seek to abstract ourselves from all 
images of things ; that to raise ourselves to the contemplation of pure 
and naked truth is the height of spiritual attainment, towards which we 
should continually be struggling.* But in requiring this as a test 
and proof of spiritual progress, in setting it as the mark towards which 
men should strive, they were not merely laying unnecessary burdens 
on men's backs, but actually leading astray. For whether one shall 
separate in his own consciousness the form from the essence, — whether 
the images which he uses shall be to him more or less conscious sym- 
bols, — does not depend on his greater or less advance in spiritual know- 
ledge, but on causes which may or may not accompany religious growth, 
and mainly on this one, — whether he has been accustomed to think 
upon his thoughts, to reflect upon the wonderful instrument which in 
language he is using. One who possesses the truth only as it is incor- 
porated in the symbol, may yet have a far stronger hold upon it — may 
be influenced by it far more mightily — may far more really be nour- 
ished by it than another, who, according to the mystic view, would be 
in a higher and more advanced state. It is true, indeed, that for them 
who have not merely to live upon the truth themselves, but to guard it 
for others, — not merely to drink of the streams of divine knowledge, but 
to see that the waters of its well-heads be not troubled for their brethren 
— for them it is well that they should be conscious, and the more con- 
scious the better, of the wonderful thing which language is, — of the 
power and mystery, of the truth and falsehood, of words ; and as a part 
of this acquaintance, that the truth, and that which is the vehicle of the 
truth, should for them be separable ; but then it should be even for 
them as soul and body, not as kernel and husk. This last comparison 
has been often used, but when pushed far, may be pushed into an error. 
It has been said that, as when the seed is cast into the ground, after a 
time the kernel disengages itself from the outer coating, and alone 
remains and fructifies, while the husk decays and perishes ; so in the 
seed of God's word, deposited in man's heart, the sensible form must fall 
off, that the inner germ releasing itself may germinate. But the image, 
urged thus far, does not aptly set forth the truth — will lead in the end 
to a Quaker-like contempt of the written word, under pretence of having 

Lord convinced Moses how fearful a thing it would be to comply with his request, 
" Show me thy glory," — hy suffering a spark of that glory, the fulness of which 
Moses had craved to see, to fall upon a mountain, which instantly hurst into a 
thousand pieces. 

* Thauler, for instance, is continually urging— Ut ab omnibus imaginibus de- 
nudemur et exuamur. — Fenelon the same ; and indeed all the mystics, from Diony- 
•ius downward, agree in this. 



ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 27 

the inmr life. The outer covering is not to fall off and perish, but to 
become glorified, being taken up by, and made translucent with, the 
spirit that is within. Man is body and soul, and being so, the truth has 
for him need of a body and soul likewise : it is well that he should 
know what is body and what is soul, but not that he should seek to kill 
the body, that he may get at the soul. 

Thus it was provided for us by a wisdom higher than our own, and 
all our attempts to disengage ourselves wholly from sensuous images 
must always in the end be unsuccessful. It will be only a changing of 
our images, and that for the worse j a giving up of living realities which 
truly stir the heart, and getting dead metaphysical abstractions in their 
room. The aim of the teacher, who would find his way to the hearts 
and understandings of his hearers, will never be to keep down the 
parabolical element in his teaching, but rather to make as much and as 
frequent use of it as he can. And to do this effectually will need a 
fresh effort of his own ; for while all language is, and of necessity must 
be, more or less figurative, yet long familiar use has worn out the 
freshness of the stamp (who, for example, that speaks of insulting, 
retains the lively image of £ leaping on the prostrate body of a foe) ; so 
that to create a powerful impression, language must be recalled, minted 
and issued anew, cast into novel forms as was done by him, of whom it 
is said, that without a parable (^apa/3oX^ in its widest sense) spake he 
nothing to his hearers ; that is, he gave no doctrine in an abstract form, 
no skeletons of truth, but all clothed, as it were, with flesh and blood. 
He acted himself as he declared to his apostles they must act, if they 
would be scribes instructed unto the kingdom, and able to instruct 
others (Matt. xiii. 52) ; he brought forth out of his treasure things new 
and old : by the help of the old he made intelligible the new; by the aid 
of the familiar he introduced them to that which was strange ; from the 
known he passed more easily to the unknown. And in his own manner 
of teaching, and in his instructions to his apostles, he has given us the 
secret of all effectual teaching, — of all speaking which shall leave behind 
it, as was said of one man's eloquence, stings in the minds and memories 
of the hearers. There is a natural delight* which the mind has in this 
manner of teaching, appealing as it does, nofr to the understanding only, 
but to the feelings, to the imagination, and in short to the whole man ; 
calling as it does the whole man with all his powers and faculties into 

* This delight has indeed impressed itself upon our language itself. To like a 
thing is to compare it to some other thing which we have already before our natu 
ral, or our mind's, eye : and the pleasurable emotion always arising from this pro- 
cess of comparison has caused us to use the word in a far wider sense than that 
which belonged to it at the first. That we like what is like is the explanation ol 
the pleasure which rhymes give us. 



28 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

pleasurable activity: and things thus learned with delight are those 
longest remembered.* 9 

Had our Lord spoken naked spiritual truth, how many of his words, 
partly from his hearers' lack of interest in them, partly from their lack 
of insight, would have passed away from their hearts and memories, 
leaving scarcely a trace behind them.f But being imparted to them in 
this form, under some lively image, in some short and perhaps seemingly 
paradoxical sentence, or in some brief but interesting narrative, they 
awakened attention, excited inquiry, and even if the truth did not at the 
moment, by the help of the illustration used, find an entrance into the 
mind, yet the words must thus often have fixed themselves in their 
memories and remained by them.J And here the comparison of the 
seed is appropriate, of which the shell should guard the life of the inner 
germ, till that should be ready to unfold itself — till there should be a 
soil prepared for it, in which it could take root and find nourishment 
suitable to its needs. His words laid up in the memory were to many 
that heard him like the money of another country, unavailable it might 
be for present use, — of which they knew not the value, and only dimly 
knew that it had a value, but which yet was ready in their hand, when 
they reached that land and were naturalized in it. When the Spirit 
came and brought all things to their remembrance, then he filled all the 
outlines of truth which they before possessed with its substance, quickened 
all its forms with the power and spirit of life. Not perhaps at once, but 
gradually, the meanings of what they had heard unfolded themselves to 
them. Small to the small, they grew with their growth. And thus must 
it ever be with all true knowledge, which is not the communication of 
information, the transference of a dead sum or capital of facts or theories 
from one mind to another, but the opening of living fountains within the 
heart, the scattering of sparks which shall kindle where they fall, the 
planting seeds of truth, which shall take root in the new soil where they 
are cast, and striking their roots downward, and sending their branches 
upward, shall grow up into goodly trees. 

Nor is it unworthy of remark, when we are estimating the extent of 
the parabolic element in Scripture, how much besides the spoken, there 



* Thus Jerome (Comm. in Matt., in loc.) describes the purpose of the parable 
(Jt quod per simplex praeceptum teneri ab auditoribus non potest, per similitudi- 
nem exemplaque teneatur. 

f It was no doubt from a deep feeling of this that the Jewish Cabbalists 
affirmed, Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumento ; with which agrees 
the saying of the pseudo-Dionysius, so often quoted by the schoolmen, Impossibile 
est nobis aliter In cere divinum radium nisi varietate sacrorum velaminum circmn- 
relatum. 

t Bernard : An non expedit tenere vel involutum, quod nudum non capis 1 



ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 29 

is there of acted, parable. In addition to those which, by a more especial 
right, we separate off, and call by the name, every type is a real parable. 
The whole Levitical constitution, with its outer court, its holy, its holiest 
of all, its high priest, its sacrifices, and all its ordinances, is such, and is 
declared to be such in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 9). The wander 
ings of the children of Israel have ever been regarded as a parable of the 
spiritual life. In like manner we have parabolic persons, who are to 
teach us not merely by what simply in their own characters they did, 
but as they represented One higher and greater ; men whose actions 
and whose sufferings obtain a new significance, inasmuch as they were in 
these drawing lines quite unconsciously themselves, wnich another should 
hereafter fill up ; as Abraham when he cast out the bondwoman and her 
son (Gal. iv. 30), Jonah in the whale's belly, David in his hour of peril 
or of agony (Ps. xxii.). And in a narrower circle, without touching on 
the central fact and Person in the kingdom of God, how often has he 
chosen that his servants should teach by an acted parable rather than by 
any other means, and this because there was no other that would make so 
deep and so lasting an impression? Thus Jeremiah is to break in pieces 
a potter's vessel, that he may foretell the complete destruction of his 
people (xix. 1-11) ; he wears a yoke that he may be himself a prophecy 
and a parable of their approaching bondage (xxvii. 2; xxviii. 10); he 
redeems a field in pledge of a redemption that shall yet be of all the 
land (xxxii. 6-15). It will at once be seen that these examples might 
be infinitely multiplied. And as God will have them by these signs to 
teach others, he continually teaches them also by the same. It is not his 
word only that comes to his prophets, but the great truths of his kingdom 
pass before their eyes incorporated in symbols, addressing themselves 
first to the spiritual eye, and only through that to the spiritual ear. 
They are indeed and eminently Seers. Ezekiel and Zechariah will at 
once suggest themselves, as those of whom, more than, perhaps, any 
others, this was true. And in the New Testament we have a great 
example of the same teaching in St. Peter's vision (Acts x. 9-16), and 
throughout all the visions of the Apocalypse, Nay, we might venture 
to affirm that so it was with the highest and greatest truth of all, that 
which includes all others — the manifestation of God in the flesh. This, 
inasmuch as it was a making intelligible of the otherwise unintelligible ; 
a making visible the invisible ; a teaching not by doctrine, but by the 
embodied doctrine of a divine life, was the highest and most glorious of 
all parables.* 

* See a few words on this in the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 5, and in Clem. Alex. 
(Strom., 1. 6, Potter's Ed., p. 803), he begins, Uapa^oXiKds yap 6 x a P aKT ^° v*&t>X** 
rmf ypupSsv ' 5t6ri koL 6 Kvpios, ovk t>v koct/jukSs els av^pd>irovs ^A&ey. 



30 ON TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

With regard to the record which we have of the Lord's parables, 
they are found, as is well known, only in the three first Gospels : that 
by St. John 'containing allegories, as of the Good Shepherd (x. 1) ; the 
True Vine (xv. 1), but no parables strictly so called. Of the other 
three, that of St. Matthew was originally written for Jewish readers, 
and mainly for the Jews of Palestine ; its leading purpose being to show 
that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the expected King of 
the Jews — the Son of David — the Son of Abraham; — that in him the 
prophecies of the Old Testament found their fulfilment. The theocratic 
spirit of his Gospel does not fail to appear in the parables which he has 
recorded ; they are concerning the kingdom, — being commonly the de- 
claration of things whereunto " the kingdom of heaven is likened," — a 
form which never once finds place in St. Luke. The same theocratic 
purpose displays itself in the form in which the Marriage of the King's 
Son appears in his Gospel, compared with the parallel narration in 
Luke ; in the last, it is only a man who makes a great supper, — while, 
in Matthew, it is a king, and the supper a marriage-supper, and that for 
his son. 

The main purpose which St. Luke had before him in writing his 
Gospel was to show, not that Jesus was the King of the Jews, but the 
Saviour of the world ; and therefore he traces our Lord's descent, not 
merely from David, the great type of the theocratic king, nor from 
Abraham, the head of the Jewish nation, but from Adam, the father of 
mankind. He, the chosen companion of the apostle of the Gentiles, 
wrote his Gospel originally for Gentile readers, so that while St. Mat- 
thew only records the sending out of the twelve apostles, corresponding 
to the twelve tribes of Israel, he relates the mission of the seventy, an- 
swering to the (supposed) seventy nations into which the world at Babel 
was divided. He, as writing for heathens who had so widely departed 
from God, has been most careful to record the Lord's declarations con- 
cerning the free mercy of God — his declarations that there is no depar- 
ture from God so wide as to preclude a return. The leading idea of 
St. Luke's Gospel seems to have guided him in the parables which he 
records. In this view, the three at chapter xv. are especially character- 
istic of his aim, and more particularly the last, that of the Prodigal Son, 
and not less so that of Dives and Lazarus, if, as Augustine, Theophylact, 
and some later commentators have suggested, we may take Dives to sig- 
nify the Jews, richly abounding with all blessings of the knowledge of 
God, and glorifying themselves in those blessings, while Lazarus, or the 
Gentile, lay despised at their door, a heap of neglected and putrefying 
sores. Again, the fact that it was a Samaritan who showed kindness to 
the poor wounded man (Luke x. 30), would seem also to have been re- 



ON TEACHING BY PAYABLES. 31 

corded not without an especial aim, to be traced up to the same leading 
idea of his Gospel. 

St. Mark has but one Parable which is peculiar to himself, that of 
the Seed growing by itself (iv. 26), which is nearly related in sub- 
stance to that of the Mustard Seed in Matthew, the place of which it 
appears to occupy. There is not, I believe, any thing so peculiar in his 
record of the parables as to call for especial notice. 



CHAPTER III. 

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

The parables, fair in their outward form, are yet fairer within— 
apples of gold in network of silver: each one of them like a casket, 
itself of exquisite workmanship, but in which jewels yet richer than 
itself are laid up ; or as fruit, which, however lovely to look upon, is yet 
more delectable still in its inner sweetness.* To find then the golden 
key for this casket, at the touch of which it shall reveal its treasures ; 
to open this fruit, so that nothing of its hidden kernel shall be missed or 
lost, has naturally been regarded ever as a matter of high concern. f 
And in this, the interpretation of the parable, a subject to which we have 
now arrived, there is one question which presents itself anew at every 
step ; namely this, how much of them is significant ? and on this sub- 
ject there have been among interpreters the most opposite theories. 
Some have gone a great way in saying, — This is merely drapery and 
ornament, and not the vehicle of essential truth ; this was introduced 
either as useful to given liveliness and a general air of verisimilitude to 
the narrative, or as actually necessary to make the story, which is the 
substratum of the truth, a consistent whole, since without this consist- 
ency the hearer Vould be both perplexed and offended, — to hold together 
and connect the different parts, just as in the most splendid house there 
must be passages, not for their own sake, but to lead from one room to 
another.^ Chrysostom continually warns against pressing too anxiously 

* Bernard : Superficies ipsa, tanquam a foris considerata, decora est valde : et 
si quis fregerit nucem, intus inveniet quod jucundius sit, et multo amplius delec- 
tabile. 

t Jerome (In Eccles. xii.) : Parabolae aliud in medulla habent, aliud in super- 
ficie pollicentur, et quasi in terra aurum, in nuce nucleus, in hirsutis castanearum 
operculis absconditus fructus inquiritur, ita in.eis divinus sensus altius perscru- 
tandus. 

% Tertullian {De Pudicitia, c. 9) : Quare centum oves 1 et quid utique decern 
drachmae 1 et quae illae scopae 7 Necesse erat qui unius peccatoris salutem gratis- 
simam Deo volebat exprimere, aliquam numeri quantitatem nominaret, de quo 
unum quidem perisse describeret : necesse erat ut habitus requirentis drachmam 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES 33 

all the circumstances of a parable, and often cuts his own interpretation 
somewhat short in language like this, — "Be not curious about the 
rest :"* and in like manner, the interpreters that habitually follow him, 
Theophylactf and others, though not always faithful to their own prin- 
ciples. So also Origen, who illustrates his meaning by a comparison of 
great beauty. He says, " For as the likenesses which are given in pic- 
tures and statues are not perfect resemblances of those things for whose 
sake they are made — but for instance the image which is painted in wax 
on a plain surface of wood, contains a resemblance of the superficies 
and colors, but does not also preserve the depressions and prominences, 
but only a representation of them — while a statue, again, seeks to pre- 
serve the likeness which consists in prominences and depressions, but 
not as well that which is in colors — but should the statue be of wax, it 
seeks to retain both, I mean the colors, and also the depressions and 
prominences, but is not an image of those things which are within — in 
the same manner, of the parables which are contained in the Grospels so 
account, that the kingdom of heaven, when it is likened to any thing, is 
not likened to it according to all the things which are contained in that 
with which the comparison is instituted, but according to certain quali- 
ties which the matter in hand requires. "J Exactly thus in modern 
times it has been said that the parable and its interpretation are not 
to be contemplated as two planes, touching one another at every point, 
but oftentimes rather as a plane and a globe, which, though brought into 
contact, yet touch one another only in one. 

On the other hand, Augustine, though sometimes laying down the 
same principle, frequently extends the interpretation through all the 
branches and minutest fibres of the narrative,^ and Origen not less, 

in domo, tarn scoparum quam lucernae adminiculo accommodaretur. Hujusmodi 
enim curiositates et suspecta faciunt quasdam, et coactaruni expositionum subtili- 
tate plerumque deducunt a veritate. Sunt autem quae et simpliciter posita sunt 
ad struendam et disponendam et texendam parabolam, ut illuc perducantur, cui 
exemplmn procuratur. Brower (De Par. J. C, p. 175) : Talia omitti non potu- 
erunt, quoniam eorum tantum ope res ad eventum facile perduci posset, cum alio- 
quin saltus fieret aut hiatus in narratione, qui rei narratas similitudini omnino 
noceret, vel quia eoruin neglectus auditores fortasse ad inanes quaestiones et dubi- 
tationes invitare posset. 

* TaWa. fxi] Trepiepyd£ov. 

f Theopbylact {In Luc. xvi.) : Uaa-a irapafio\}) irXayiws Kal cIkovik&s 577X0T 7rp«y- 
pdTcov Ttvav (pvffiv, ob Kara irdvra ioiKvla reus tcpdyfiatnv iiteli/ois, 5i' a TrapeXJiQ&T]. Hi 
t ou5e XPV TO-VTa to fiepr] r£>v irapafioXobi/ Xgtttws TroXvirpay/xovevea-^ai, aXX* Hffop Zone* 
rep irpoKei/xevcp Kapirovfieuovs. ra Xonra lav, &s rrj irapafSoXy\ crvvv<pi<rTaiJ.eua, Kal ; 7&P 
wpbs rb irpoKelfievov (rvfi^aXXSpLeva. 

J Comm. in Matth. xiii. 47. 

§ See a wonderful instance of the extent to which this may be done in an expo 
rition of the Prodigal Son, given in his Qucest. Evang., 1. 2. qu. 33. • 

3 



34 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

despite the passage which I have just quoted. And in modern times- 
the followers of Cocceius have been particularly earnest in affirming 
all parts of a parable to be significant.* Perhaps, I might mar the plea- 
sure of some readers in the following noble passage, by saying from 
whence it was drawn : but the writer is describing the long and labo- 
rious care which he took to master the literal meanmg of every word in 
the parables, being confident of the riches of inward truth which every 
one of those words contained ; he goes on to say, — " Of my feelings and 
progress in studying the parables of our Lord, I have found no simili- 
tude worthy to convey the impression, save that of sailing through be- 
tween the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean Sea, where you 
have to pass between armed rocks, in a strait, and under a current — all 
requiring careful and skilful seamanship — but being past, opening into 
such a large, expansive, and serene ocean of truth, so engirdled round 
with rich and fertile lands, so inlaid with beautiful and verdant islands^ 
and full of rich colonies and populous cities, that unspeakable is the 
delight and the reward' it yieldeth to the voyager." 

On a review of the whole controversy it may safely be said, that the 
advocates of the first-mentioned scheme of interpretation have been too 
easily satisfied with their favorite saying — (i Every comparison must 
halt somewhere ;"f — since one may well demand, " Where is the neces- 
sity V There is no force in the reply, that unless it did so, it would 
not be an illustration of the thing, but the thing itself ; since two lines 
do not become one, nor cease to be two, because they run parallel 
through their whole course ; it needs not that they somewhere cease to 
be parallel, to prevent them from being one and the same.J It may 
well be considered, too, whether these interpreters, in their fear of capri- 
cious allegories, have not run into an opposite extreme. It is quite true, 
to use an illustration which they sometimes employ, that a knife is not all 
edge, nor a harp all strings ; that much in the knife, which does not 
cut, is yet of prime necessity, as the handle, — much, in the musical in- 
strument, which is not intended to give sound, must yet not be wanting: 
or to use another comparison, that many circumstances "in Christ's 
parables are like the feathers which wing our arrows, which, though 
they pierce not like the head, but seem slight things and of a different 
matter from the rest, are yet requisite to make the shaft to pierce, and 
do both convey it to and penetrate the mark."§ It is true, also, that 

* Teclman (Comm. in Luc. xvi., p. 34-52) defends this principle at length and 
with much ability. 

t Omne simile claudicat. 

$ Theophylact (in Suicer's Thes., s. v. irapafioX-f)) : 'H irapafioX)}, iav 8ik it&vrvp 
T&C r l' r cu, ovk tan irapa&oXk, aXX' aurb e/celVo, Si t tj irapafSoXi). 

. $ Boyle's Style of tlie Holy Scriptures ; Fifth Objection. There is a remarkable 






ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 35 

in the other scheme of interpretation, there is the danger lest a delight 
in the exercise of ingenuity on the part of the interpreter, and admira 
tion of the ingenuity so exercised on the side of the readers and hearers, 
may cause it to be forgotten that the sanctification of the heart through 
the truth is the main purpose of all Scripture : — even as there will pre- 
sently be occasion to observe how heretics, through this pressing of all 
parts of a parable to the uttermost, have been wont to extort from it 
almost any meaning that they pleased. 

Yet, on the other hand, there is a shallow spirit ever ready to empty 
Scripture of the depth of its meaning, to exclaim — " This means nothing, 
this circumstance is not to be pressed ;" and satisfying ourselves with 
sayings like these, we may fail to draw out from the word of God all 
the riches of meaning that are contained in it for us, — we may fail to 
observe and to admire the wisdom with which the type was constructed, 
to correspond with its antitype. For as a work of human art, a statue, 
for instance, is the more perfect in the measure that the life, the idea, 
that was in the sculptor's mind, breathes out of and looks through every- 
feature and limb, so much the greater being the triumph of spirit,, 
penetrating through and glorifying the matter which it has assumed ; 
so the more translucent a parable is in all parts with the divine truth, 
which it embodies, the more the garment with which it is arrayed, is ai 
garment of light, pierced through, as was once the raiment of Christ;, 
with the brightness within, — illuminating it in all its recesses and! 
corners, and leaving no dark place in it, — by so much the more beautiful; 
and perfect it must be esteemed. It may be further answered, that of 
those who start with the principle that so much is to be set aside aa 

passage in Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 1. 16, c. 2), where he carries out this view strlli 
further; Non sane omnia quae gesta narrantur, aliquid etiam significare putanda 
sunt : sed propter ilia quae aliquid significant, etiam ilia quae nihil significant attex- 
untur. Solo enim vomers terra proscinditur, sed ut hoc fieri possit, etiam caetara 
aratri membra sunt necessaria. Et soli nervi in citharis atque hujusmodi vasis 
musicis aptantur ad cantum, sed ut aptari possint, insunt et csetera in compaginibus- 
organorum, quae non percutiuntur a canentibus, sed ea quae percussa resonant his 
connectuntur. Ita in prophetica historia dicuntur et aliqua, quae nihil significant, 
sed quibus adhaereant quae significant, et quomodo religentur. Cf. Con. Faust. 1, 22. 
c. 94. A Romish expositor, Salmeron, has a comparison something similar : Cer- 
ium est. gladium non omni ex parte scindere, sed una tantum : nee enim per manu- 
brium secat, neque per partem obtusam oppositam aciei, neque per cuspidem, sed 
tantum per aciem secat. Et tamen nemo sanae mentis dixerit aut manubrium aut 
cuspidem aut partem obtusam oppositam aciei, necessaria non esse ad scindendum : 
nam etsi per se ipsa non scindant, serviunt tamen ut pars quae acuta est, et ad 
secandum nata, scindere fortius et commodius valeat. Ita in parabolis multa aflfer- 
untur, quae etsi per se ipsa sensum spiritalem non eflficiant, conducunt tamen ut 
parabola per illam partem scindat et secet, ad quod praestandum ab auctore propo- 
aita fuerat. 



36 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

non-essential, scarcely are to be found any two agreed, when it conies to 
the application of their principle, concerning what actually is to be set 
aside ; what one rejects, another retains^ and the contrary. Moreover, it 
is always observable that the more this system is carried out, the more 
the peculiar beauty of the parable disappears, and the interest in it is 
weakened. For example, when Calvin will not allow the oil in the 
vessels (Matt, xxv.) to mean any thing, and when Storr,* who, almost 
more than any other, would leave the parables bare trunks, stripped of 
all their foliage and branches, of all that made for beauty and ornament, 
denies that the Prodigal leaving his father's house has any direct refer- 
ence to man's departure from the presence of his heavenly Father, it is 
at once evident of how much, not merely of pleasure, but of instruction, 
they would deprive us. It may be remarked too, in opposition to the 
interpretation of the parables merely in the gross, that when our Lord 
himself interpreted the two first which he delivered, those of the Sower, 
and of the Tares, it is more than probable that he intended to furnish 
us with a key for the interpretation of all. These explanations therefore 
are most important, not merely for their own sakes, but as laying, down the 
principles and canons of interpretation to be applied throughout. Now 
in these the moral application descends to some of the minutest details 
of the narrative : thus, the birds which snatch away the seed sown, are 
explained as Satan who takes the good word out of the heart (Matt, 
xiii. 19), the thorns correspond to the cares and pleasures of life (Matt, 
xiii. 22), and much more of the same kind. " It must be allowed," says 
Tholuck,t " that a similitude is perfect in proportion as it is on all sides 
rich in applications ;| and hence, in treating the parables of Christ, the 
expositor must proceed on the presumption that there is import in every 
single point, and only desist from seeking it, when either it does not 
;result without forcing, or when we can clearly show that this or that 
circumstance was merely added for the sake of giving intuitiveness to 

* De Parabolls Christi, in his Opusd: Acad., v. 1, p. 89. 

f Auslegung der Bergpredigt, p. 201. "With this agrees what Bishop Lowth 
says, De Sac. PoGs. Heb., Prcel. 10. 

X Vitringa : Placent inihi qui ex parabolis Christi Domini plus veritatis eliciunt, 
quam generale quoddam prseceptum ethicum, per parabolam illustratum et audi- 
torum animis fortius infixum. Non quod audaciter pronunoiare sustineam, ejus- 
modi institutionis aut persuasionis genus, si Domino nostro placuisset illud adhi- 
bere, cum summa ejus sapientia non potuisse consistere. Contendo tamen de 
summa sapientia qualis ilia fuit Filii Dei, nos merito plus prsesumere, ac propterea, 
si parabolas Christi Domini ita explicari queant, ut singulse earum partes com- 
mode et absque violentis contorsionibus transforantur ad 03conomiam Ecclesiae, 
illud ego explicationis genus tanquam optumum amplectendum, et ceteris praefer- 
endum existimo. Quant6 enim plus solidas veritatis ex Verbo Dei eruerimus si 
nihil obstet, tanto magis divinam commendabimus sapientianx 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 37 

the narrative. We should not assume any thing to be non-essential, 
except when by holding it fast as essential the unity of the whole is 
or.arred and troubled."* 

It will much help us in this matter of determining what is essential 
and what not, if, before we attempt to explain the particular parts, we 
obtain fast hold of the central truth which the parable would set forth, 
and distinguish it in the mind as sharply and accurately as we can from 
all cognate truths which border upon it ; for only seen from that middle 
point will the different parts appear in their true light. " One may 
compare," says a late writer on the parables,f " the entire parable with 
a circle, of which the middle point is the spiritual truth or doctrine, and 
of which the radii are the several circumstances of the narration ; so 
long as one has not placed oneself in the centre, neither the circle itself 
appears in its perfect shape, nor will the beautiful unity with which the 
radii converge to a single point be perceived, but this is all observed so 
soon as the eye looks forth from the centre. Even so in the parable, if 
we have recognized its middle point, its main doctrine, in full light, then 
will the proportion and right signification of all particular circumstances 
be clear unto us, and we shall lay stress upon them only so far as the 
main truth is thereby more vividly set forth." 

There is another rule which it is important to observe, which at the 
same time is so simple and obvious, that were it not very frequently 
neglected, it would hardly be thought needful to be mentioned, but 
might be left to the common sense of every interpreter. It is this, that 
as in the explanation of the fable, the introduction (npofxtetov) and 
application (empteiov) claim to be most carefully attended to, so hero 
what some have entitled the pro-parabola and epi-parabola, though the 



* Out of this feeling the Jewish doctors distinguished lower forms of revelation 
from higher, dreams from prophetic communications thus, that in the higher all 
was essential, while the dream ordinarily contained something that was super- 
fluous; and they framed this axiom, — "As there is no corn without straw, so 
neither is there any more dream without something that is apySv, void of reality 
and insignificant." They would instance Joseph's dream (Gen. xxxvii. 9) ; the 
moon could not there have been well left out, when all the heavenly host did obei- 
sance to him ; yet this circumstance was thus apy6u, for his mother, who thereby 
was signified, was even then dead, and so incapable of rendering hereafter the 
homage to him which the others at last did. (See John Smith's Discourses, 
p. 178.) 

f Lisco : Die Parabeln Jesu, p. 22 ; a sound and useful work. It has been 
translated into English — how, may be guessed by a single specimen. Having occa- 
sion to characterize Vitrixga's Erklttrung der Parabolen, Lisco observes of it thus : 
Ein uber 1000 Seiten starkes "Werk, breiter Sprache (a book more than a thousand 
pages thick, very diffuse), which however reappears in the translation : " A work 
of great power in many respects, in broad dialect." 



38 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

other terms would have done sufficiently well, which are invariably lha 
finger-posts pointing to the direction in which we are to look for the* 
meaning, — the key to the whole matter. These deserve the most 
attentive heed, as their neglect often betrays into the most untenable 
explanations ; for instance, how many of the interpretations which have 
been elaborately worked out of the Laborers in the Vineyard, could 
never have been so much as once proposed, if heed had been paid to the 
context, or the necessity been acknowledged of bringing the interpreta- 
tion into harmony with the saying, which introduces and winds up the 
parable. These helps to interpretation, though rarely or never lack- 
ing,* are yet given in no fixed or formal manner ; sometimes they are 
supplied by the Lord himself (Matt xxii. 14; xxv. 13); sometimes by 
the inspired narrators of his words (Luke xv. 1, 2; xviii. 1); sometimes, 
as the prologue, they precede the parable (Luke xviii. 9; xix. 11); 
sometimes, as the epilogue, they follow (Matt. xxv. 13 ; Luke xvi. 9). 
Occasionally a parable is furnished with these helps to its right under- 
standing and application both at its opening and its close ; as is that of 
the Unmerciful Servant (Matt, xviii. 23), which is suggested by the 
question which Peter asks (ver. 21), and wound up by the application 
which thp Lord himself makes (ver. 35). So again the Parable, at 
Matt. xx. 1-15, begins and finishes with the same saying, and Luke xii. 
16-20 is supplied with the same amount of help for its right under- 
standing.! 

Again we may observe that an interpretation, besides being thus in 
accordance with its context, must be so without any very violent means 
being applied to bring it into such agreement ; even as, generally the 
interpretation must be easy — if not always easy to be discovered, yet 
being discovered, easy. For it is here as with the laws of nature ; the 
proleptic mind of genius may be needful to discover the law, but being 
discovered, it throws back light on itself, and commends itself unto all. 
And there is this other point of similarity also ; it is the proof of the 
law that i explains ' all the phenomena and not merely some — that 

* Tertullian {De Besur. Cam., c. 33) : Nullum parabolam non aut ab ipso in- 
venias edisseratam, ut de Semiuatore in verbi a^ministratione : aut a cornmenta- 
tore Evangelii praeluminatam, utjudicis superbi et viduse instantis ad perseveran- 
tiam orationes ; aut ultro conjectandam, ut arboris fici, dilatae in spem, ad instar 
Judaica3 infructuositatis. 

j- Salmeron (Serm. in Evang. Par., p. 19) has a threefold division of the para- 
bh, which is worth noticing. There are three things, he says, which, in proceed- 
ing to interpret it, claim our attention ; the radix or root out of which it grows, 
which may also be regarded as the final cause or scope with which it is spoken, 
which is to be looked for in the irpojxvStiov ; next, the cortex or the outward sensu- 
ous array in which it clothes itself; and then the medulla, or inward core, the 
spiritual truth which it enfolds. 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 39 

sooner or later they all marshal themselves in order under it : so it ia 
tolerable evidence that we have found the right interpretation of a para* 
ble, if it leave none of the main circumstances unexplained. A false 
interpretation will inevitably betray itself, since it will u invariably 
paralyze and render nugatory some important member of an entire ac- 
count." If we have the right key in our hand, not merely some of the 
words, but all, will have their corresponding parts, and moreover the 
key will turn without grating or over-much forcing ; and if we have 
the right interpretation, it will scarcely need to be defended and made 
plausible with great appliance of learning, to be propped up by remote 
allusions to Rabbinical or profane literature, by illustrations drawn from 
the recesses of antiquity.* 

Qnce more — the parables may not be made first sources of doctrine. 
Doctrines otherwise and already grounded may be illustrated, or indeed 
further confirmed by them ; but it is not allowable to constitute doc- 
trine first by their aid.f They may be the outer ornamental fringe, but 
not the main texture, of the proof. . For from the literal to the figura- 
tive, from the clearer to the more obscure, has been ever recognized as 
the law of Scripture interpretation. This rule, however, has been often 
forgotten, and controversialists, looking round for arguments with which 
to sustain some weak position, one for which they can find no other sup- 
port in Scripture, often invent for themselves supports in these. Thus 
Bellarmine presses the parable of the Grood Samaritan, and the circum- 
stance that in that the thieves are said first to have stripped the traveller, 



* That which is required in a satisfactory solution, is well stated by Teclman 
(Comm. in I/wc, 16, p. 23) : Explicatio non sit hiulca, non aspera, non auribus nee 
judicio difficilis. non ridicula ; sed mollis et verecunda, leniter manantis fluvii instar 
amcenitate in aures auditorumque judicium influens, appropriata, proxima, et ab 
omni longa petitione remota. 

f This rule finds its expression in the recognized axiom : Theologia parabolica 
non est argumentativa. And again : Ex solo sensu litterali peti possunt argumenta 
eflScacia. See Gerhard's Loc. Theol., 1. 2, c. 13, () 202. There is a beautiful pas- 
sage in Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, 1. 1, c. 4, on the futility of using as primary 
arguments what indeed can but serve as graceful confirmation of truths already od 
other grounds received and believed, — and against gainsayers most of all. The 
objector is made to reply to one who presses him with the wonderful correspond- 
encies of Scripture : Omnia haec pulcra et quasi quaedam picturae suscipienda sunt . 
sed si non sit aliquid solidum super quod sedeant, non videntur infidelibus satis- 
facere : nam qui picturam vult facere, aliquid eligit solidum super quod plngat. ut 
maneat quod pingit. Nemo enim pingit in aqua vel in afire ; quia ibi nulla manent 
picturae vestigia. Qua propter cum has convenientias quas dicis, infidelibus quasi 
quasdam picturas rei gestae obtendimus, quoniam non rem gestam sed figmentum 
arbtrantur esse quod credimus ; quasi super nubem pingere nos existimant. Mon : 
stranda est prius veritatis rationabilis soliditas. Deinde, ut ipsum quasi corpus 
veritatis plus niteat, istaa convenientiae, quasi picturae corporis sunt exponendae. 



40 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

and aftenvards to have inflicted wounds on him, as proving certain 
views of the Romish Church on the order of man's fall, the succession 
in which, first losing heavenly gifts, the robe of a divine righteousness, 
he afterwards, and as a consequence, endured actual hurts in his soul.* 
And in 'the same way Faustus Socinus argues from the parable of the 
Unmerciful Servant, that as the king pardoned his servant merely on his 
petition (Matt, xviii. 22), and not on account of any satisfaction made, 
or any mediator intervening, we may draw from this the conclusion, 
that in the same way, and without requiring sacrifice or intercessor, 
God pardons his debtors simply on the ground of their prayers. f 

But far the greatest sinners against this rule were the Gnostics and 
Manichseans in old time, especially the former. The parables were far 
too welcome to these, who could find no color for their scheme in the 
plain declarations of Scripture, for them to allow themselves to be rob- 
bed of the help which they hoped to find in this quarter, by attending 
to any such canon as this. The whole scheme of the Gnostics was one 
which, however it may have been a result of the Gospel, inasmuch as 
that set the religious speculation of the world vigorously astir, was yet 
of independent growth ; and they only came to the Scripture to find a 
varnish, an outer Christian coloring, for a system essentially antichris- 
tian ; — not to learn its language, but to see if they could not compel it 
to speak theirs.J They came with no desire to draw out of Scripture 
its meaning, but to thrust into Scripture their own.§ When they fell 
thus to picking and choosing from it what was best adapted to their ends } 

* De Grat. Prim. Horn. : Neque enim sine causa. Dominus in parabola, ilia prius 
dixit, hominem spoliatum, posterius autem, vulneratum fuisse, cum tamen contra 
accidere soleat in veris latrociniis ; nimirum indicare volu.it, in hoc spirituali latro- 
cinio ex ipsa amissione justitiae originalis nata esse vulnera nostrae naturae. (See 
Gerhard's Loc. Theol . oc. 9, c. 2. § 86.) 

t Deyling, Obss. Sac., v. 4, c. 649. Socinus here sins against another rule of 
Scripture interpretation as of common sense, which is, that we are not to expect in 
every place the whole circle of Christian truth to be fully stated, and that no con- 
clusion may be drawn from the absence of a doctrine from one passage which is 
clearly stated in others. Jerome (Adv. Jovin., 1. 2) : Neque enim in omnibus locis 
docentur omnia ; sed unaquseque similitudo ad id refertur cujus est similitudo. 

$ Jerome : Ad voluntatem suam Scripturam trahere repugnantem. 

^ Irenaeus. 1. 1, c. 8 : Ut figmentum illorum non sine teste esse videatur. All 
this very nearly repeats itself in Swedenborg, in whom, indeed, there are many 
resemblances to the Gnostics of old, especially the distinctive one of a division of 
the Church into spiritual and carnal members. One, estimating his system of 
Scripture interpretation, thus speaks: "His spiritual sense of Scripture is one 
altogether disconnected from the literal sense, is rather a sense before the sense ; 
not a sense to which one mounts up from the steps of that which is below, but in 
which one must, as by a miracle, be planted, for it is altogether independent of. 
and disconnected from, the accidental externum superadditum of the literal sense." 



ON THE INTERPRETATION" OF PARABLES. 41 

the parables would naturally invite them almost more than any other 
portions of Scripture ; for it was plain that they must abandon the literal 
portions of Scripture ; their only refuge was in the figurative, in those 
which might receive more interpretations than one ; such perhaps they 
might bend to their purposes. Accordingly we find them revelling in 
these ; with no joy indeed in them, on account of their simplicity or 
practical depth or ethical beauty ; for they seem to have had no sense or 
feeling of these ; but delighted to superinduce upon them their own ca- 
pricious and extravagant fancies. Irenseus is continually compelled to 
vindicate the parables against them, and to rescue them from the extreme 
abuse to which they submitted them, who not merely warped and drew 
them a little aside, but made them tell wholly a different tale from that 
which they were intended to tell.* Against them he lays down that 
canon, namely, that the parables cannot be in any case the original or the 
exclusive foundations of any doctrine, but must be themselves interpreted 
according to the analogy 6f faith ; since, if every subtle solution of one 
of these might raise itself at once to the dignity and authority of a 
Christian doctrine, the rule of faith would be nowhere. So to build 
were to build not on the rock, but on the sand.f 

Tertullian has the same conflict to maintain. The whole scheme of 
the Gnostics was a great floating cloud-palace, the figment of their own 
3rain, and having no counterpart in the actual world of realities. They 

* In a striking passage {Adv. Hcer., 1. 1, c. 8), he likens their dealing with Scrip- 
ture, their violent transpositions of it till it became altogether a different thing in 
their hands, to their fraud, who should break up some work of exquisite mosaic, 
wrought by a skilful artificer to present the effigy of a king, and should then 
recompose the pieces upon some wholly different plan, and make them to express 
some vile image of a fox or dog, hoping that, since they could point to the stones 
as being the same, they should be able to persuade the simple that this was the 
king's image still. 

•f Thus Con. Hcer., 1. 2, c. 27. Et ideo parabolae debent non ambiguis adaptari : 
sic enim et qui absolvit sine periculo absolvit, et parabolae ab omnibus similiter 
absolutionem accipient : et a veritate corpus integrum, et simili aptatione mem- 
brorum et sine concussione perseverat. Sed quae non aperte dicta sunt neque ante 
oculos posita, copulare absolutionibus parabolarum, quas unusquisque prout vult 
adinvenit [stultum est]. Sic enim apud nullum erit regula veritatis, sed quanti 
fuerint qui absolvent parabolas, tantae videbuntur veritates pugnantes semet invi- 
cem. So too c. 3 : Quia autem parabolas possunt multas recipere absolutiones, ex 
ipsis de inquisitione Dei affirmare, relinquentes quod certum et indubitatum et 
verum est, valde praecipitantium se in periculum et irrationabilium esse, quis non 
amantiam veritatem confitebitur 1 et numquid hoc est non in petra firma. et valida 
et in aperto posita asdificare suam domum, sed in incertum effusae arenae 1 Unde 
et facilis est eversio hujusmodi aedificationis. Cf. 1. 2, c. 10 ; and for an example 
of what they were able to bring out of a parable, see the explanations of the Lost 
Sheep, and the Lost Piece of Money, 1. 1, c. 16. The miracles were submitted by 
them to the same process of interpretation ; see 1. 1, c. 7, and 1. 2, c. 24. 



42 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

could therefore shape or mould it as they would. They found no 
difficulty then in forcing the parables to be upon their side. For they 
readily modified their scheme, shaping their doctrine according to tho 
leadings and suggestions of these, till they brought the two into apparent 
agreement with one another. There was nothing to hinder them here ; 
their doctrine was not a fixed body of divine truth to which they could 
neither add nor take away, which was given them from above, and in 
which they could only acquiesce : but it was an invention of their own, 
and they could invent and fashion it as they pleased, and as best suited 
their purposes. "We, as Tertullian often says, are kept within limits in 
the exposition of the parables, accepting as we do the other Scriptures 
as the rule to us of truth, as the rule therefore of their interpretation. 
It is otherwise with these heretics ; their doctrine is their own ; they 
can first dexterously adapt it to the parables, and then bring forward 
this adaptation as a testimony of its truth.* 

As it was with the G-nostics of the early Church, exactly so was it 
with the cognate sects of a later day, the Cathari, and Bogomili ; they 
too found in the parables no teaching about sin and grace and redemp- 
tion, no truths of the kingdom of God, but fitted to them the speculations 
about the creation, the origin of evil, the fall of angels, which were 
uppermost in their minds, which they had not drawn from Scripture, 
but which having framed, they afterwards turned to Scripture to find it 
there was not something there which they could compel to fall into their 
scheme. Thus the apostasy of Satan and his drawing after him a part 
of the host of heaven, they found set forth by the parable of the Unjust 
Steward. Satan was the chief steward over God's house, whom he 
deposed from his place of highest trust, and who then drew after him 
the other angels with the suggestion of lighter tasks and relief from the 
burden of their imposed duties. f 



* De Pudicitid, c. 8, 9. Among much else which is interesting, he says, Haere- 
tici parabolas quo volunt trahunt, non quo debent, aptissimfc excludunt. [Hia 
image is from the workers in gold or rather metals ; called exclusores (see Augus- 
tine, Enarr. in Ps. liv. 22) from excludere, to strike or stamp out (Du Cange, s. v.) 
This meaning of the word excludere is wanting in Scheller's Dictionary.] Quara 
aptissimfe % Quoniam a primordio secundum occasiones parabolarum, ipsas niate- 
rias confinxerunt doctrinae. Vacavit scilicet illis solutis a regula veritatis, ea con- 
quirere atque componere, quorum parabolas videntur. Thus too De Prase. Hceret., 
c. 8, Valeatinus non ad materiam Scripturas sed materiam ad Scripturas, excogi- 
tavit. 

t Neander, Kirch. GescL, v. 5, p. 1082. They dealt more perversely, and at 
the same time more characteristically still, with the parable of the Servant that 
owed tho ten thousand talents (Ibid, v. 5, p. 1122) : This servant too. with whom 
the king reckons, is Satan or the Demiurgus, his wife and children whom the king 
orders to be sold, the first his Sophia or intelligence, tho second the angels subject 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. . 43 

But, though not testifying to evils at all so grave in the devisers of 
ths scheme, nor leading altogether out of the region of Christian truth, 
yet sufficiently injurious to the sober interpretation of the parables, 
is such a theory concerning them as that entertained, and in actual 
exposition carried out by Cocceius, and his followers of what we may 
call the historico-prophetical school. By the parables, they say, and so 
far they have right, are declared the mysteries of the kingdom of God. 
But then laying hold of the term, kingdom of God, and understanding 
it in far too exclusive a sense, they are determined to find in every one 
of the parables a part of the history of that kingdom's progressive 
development in the world, to the remotest times. They will not allow 
any to be merely for exhortation, for reproof, for instruction in right- 
eousness, but affirm all to be historico-prophetical. Thus, to let one of 
them speak for himself, in the remarkable words of Krummacher,* — 
u The parables <3f Jesus have not primarily a moral, but a politico- 
religious, or theocratic purpose. To use a comparison, we may consider 
the kingdom of God carried forward under his guidance, as the action, 
gradually unfolding itself, of an Epos, whose first germ lay prepared 
long beforehand in the Jewish economy of the Old Testament, but which 
through him began to unfold itself, and will continue to do so to the end 
of time. The name and subscription of the Epos is, Tlie kingdom of 
God. The parables belong essentially to the Gospel of the kingdom, 
not merely as containing its doctrine, but its progressive development. 
They connect themselves with certain fixed periods of that development, 
and, as soon as these periods are completed, lose themselves in tke very 
completion: that is, considered as independent portions of the Epos, 
remaining for us only in the image and external letter." He must mean, 
of course, in the same manner and degree as all other fulfilled prophecy 
— in the light of such accomplished prophecy, he would say, they must 
henceforth be regarded. 

Boyle gives some, though a very moderate countenance, to the same 
opinion, saying of the parables, " Some, if not most, do, like those oysters 
that, besides the meat they afford us, contain pearls, not only include 
excellent moralities, but comprise important prophecies ;" and having 
adduced the Mustard Seed and the Wicked Husbandmen as plainly 

to him. God pitied him, and did not take from him his higher intelligence, his 
subjects or his goods; he promising, if God would have patience ^vith him, to 
create so great a number of men as should supply the place of the fallen angels. 
Therefore God gave him permission that for six days, the six thousand years of the 
present world, he should bring to pass what he could with the world which he had 
created — But this will suffice. 

* Not the Krummacher who is now, or was of late, so popular in England, but 
his father, himself the author of a volume of very graceful original parables. 



44 . ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 

containing such prophecies, he goes on. " I despair not to see unheeded 
prophecies disclosed in others of them."* Vitringa's Elucidation of iht 
Parables^ is a practical application of this scheme of interpretation, and 
one which certainly is not calculated to give one a very favorable opinion 
of it. As a specimen, the servant owing the ten thousand talents (Matt, 
xviii. 23), is the Pope, or line of Popes, placed in highest trust in tho 
Church, but who, misusing the powers committed to them, were warned 
by the invasion of Goths, Lombards, and other barbarians, of judgment 
at the door, and indeed seemed given into their hands for punishment ; 
but being mercifully delivered from this fear of imminent destruction ai 
the time of Charlemagne, so far from repenting and amending, on the* 
contrary, now more than ever oppressed and maltreated the true 
servants of G-od, and who therefore should be delivered over to an 
irreversible doom. He gives a yet more marvellous explanation of the 
Merchant seeking goodly pearls, this pearl of price *being the church of 
Geneva ! and the doctrine of Calvin opposed to all the abortive pearls, 
that is, to all the other reformed Churches. Other examples may be 
found in Cocceius — an interpretation, for instance, of the Ten Yirgins, 
• after this same fashion. \ Deyling has an interesting essay on this school 
of interpreters, and passes a severe, though certainly not undeserved, 
condemnation on them.§ Prophetical, no doubt, many of the parables 
are, for they declare how the new element of life, which the Lord was 
bringing into men's hearts and into the world, would work — the future 

* On the Style of the Holy Scriptures : Fifth Objection. There is nothing ne-n 
however in this scheme, for it is evident from many passages, that Origen had very 
much the same belief. I would refer particularly to what he says on the parabVa 
of the Laborers in the Vineyard {Comm. inMatth. xx.), where he seems to laboj 
under the sense of some great undisclosed mystery concerning the future destiniev 
3f the kingdom of God, lying hidden in that parable. St. Ambrose {Apolog. Alt. 
David, c. 57) gives a strange historico-prophetical interpretation of Nathan'ju 
parable of the Ewe Lamb : and Hippolytus (De Antichristo, c. 57), of the Unjust 
Judge. 

f Erkldrung der Parabolen. — Being published, not like most of his other works i<» 
Latin, but originally in Dutch, it is far less known, as indeed it deserves to be, th&fl 
his other oftentimes very valuable works. I have made use of a German transla- 
tion, Frankfort, 1717. The volume consists of more than a thousand rather closely- 
printed pages, and has wonderfully little grain to be winnowed out from a most 
unreasonable proportion of chaff. 

% Schol. in Matth. xxv. More are to be found in Gurtler s Syst. Theol. Proph., 
as at pp. 542, 670. Deusingius, Teelman, D'Outrein, Solomon Van Till, may be 
named among the other chief writers of this school. 

<j Obss. Sac, v. 5, p. 331, seq. . He notes how the same scheme of interpretation 
has been applied by the same school of interpreters to the miracles. Of this 
various examples may be found in Lampe's Commentary on St. John, — see, for in- 
stance, on the feeding of the five thousand (John vi.). They form the weakest 
part of a book which contains in other respects much that is admirable. 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF PARABLES. 45 

influences and results of his doctrine — that the little mustard-seed would 
grow to a great tree — that the leaven would continue working till it had 
leavened the whole lump. But they declare not so much the facts as 
the laws of the kingdom, or the facts only so far as by giving insight 
into the laws, they impart a knowledge of the facts. Historico-prophe- 
tical are only a few ; as for instance, that of the Wicked Husbandmen 
which Boyle adduced, in which there is a clear prophecy of the death of 
Christ ; as that again of the Marriage of the King's Son, in which there 
is an equally clear announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 
transfer of the privileges of the kingdom of God from the Jews to the 
Gentiles. But this subject will again present itself to us when we have 
arrived at the conclusion of the seven parables contained in the 13th of 
St. Matthew. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES. 

However the most perfect specimens of this form of composition, 
those by which the comparative value of all other in the like kind are 
to be measured, are to he found in that Book which is the most perfect 
of all books, yet they do not belong exclusively to it. The parable, as 
Jerome has noted, is among the favorite vehicles for conveying moral 
truth in all the East. Our Lord took possession of it, honored it by 
making it his own, by using it as the vehicle for the very highest truth 
of all. But there were parables before the parables which issued from 
his lips. It seems to belong to our subject to say a little concerning 
those, which, though they did not give the pattern to, yet preceded his, 
concerning those also which were formed more or less immediately on 
the suggestion and in the imitation of his, on the Jewish, that is, and the 
Christian. And first upon the Jewish parables. 

Some indeed have denied, but against all testimony, that this method 
of teaching by parables was current among the Jews before our Saviour's 
time. To this they had been mainly led by the fear lest it should de- 
tract from his glory, to suppose that he had availed himself of a manner 
of teaching already in use. Yet surely the anxiety which has been 
often shown, and of which this is a specimen, to cut off the Lord's 
teaching from all living connection with his age and country is very 
idle, and the suspicion with which parallels from the uninspired Jewish 
writings have been regarded, altogether misplaced. It is the same 
anxiety which would cut off the Mosaic legislation and institutions alto- 
gether from Egypt ;* which cannot with honesty be done, and which, 
in truth, there is no object whatever in attempting. (_,For if Christianity 
be indeed the world-religion, it must gather into one all dispersed raya 

* The attempt fails even when made by so able and learned a man as Witsius, 
It is not from grounds such as he occupies in his jEgyptiaca, that books like Spen- 
cer's De Legibus Hebrceomm, can be answered. 



PARABLES NOT IN THE SCRIPTURES. 47 

of light : it must appropriate to itself all elements of truth which are 
any where scattered abroad, jiot thus adopting what is alien, but rather 
claiming what is its own. ;^/ There cannot be a doubt that our blessed 
Lord so spake, as that his doctrine, according to its outward form, should 
commend itself to his countrymen. There were inner obstacles enough 
to their receiving of it ; need was it therefore that outwardly it should 
be attractive. Thus he appealed to proverbs in common use among 
them. He quoted the traditionary speeches of their elder Rabbis, to 
refute, to enlarge, or to correct them. When he found the theological 
terms of their schools capable of bearing the burden of the new truth 
which he laid upon them, he willingly used them ;f and in using, did 
not deny their old meaning, yet at the same time glorified and trans- 
formed it into something far higher. He used them, but all his words 
being creative, and he making all things new, he breathed into them 
also a new spirit of life. The prayer, " Thy kingdom come," formed 
v already a part of the Jewish liturgy, yet not the less was it a new prayer , 
on the lips of all who had realized in any measure the idea of the 
kingdom, and what was signified by the coming of that kingdom, as 
lie first had enabled them to realize it. So, u Peace be unto you !" 
was no doubt an ordinary salutation among the Jews long before, yet 
having how much deeper a significance, and one how altogether new 
upon his lips who was (our Peace, and who, first causing us to enter our- 
selves into the peace of God, enabled us truly to wish peace, and to 
Bpeak peace, to our brethren, j In like manner also it is not to be doubted 
that a proselyte was in the Jewish schools entitled, " a new creature," 
and his passing over to Judaism was called "a new birth j" J yet were 
these terms used, as far as we can see, to express a change only in his 
outward relations — that his kinsmen were his kinsmen no more ; it re- 
mained for Christ and his apostles to appropriate them to the higher 
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Nor less is it certain that the 
illustrating of doctrines by the help of parables, or briefer comparisons, 
was eminently in use among the Jewish teachers,^ so that it might also 

* In the words of Clement (Strom., 1. 1, c. 13) : Avuar^i t\ aXfaeia <rwaydyeiv tA 
oliceia air^pp-ara, nav €is t\\v h.Kkoba.ir))V itcireoy yr\v. 

t There is an interesting Essay in this point of view hy Schoettgen (Hor. Heb., 
v. 2, p. 883,) with the title Christus Rabbinorum, summus. In the same way the 
whole coloring of Ezekiel's visions, and the symbols which he uses, are Persian V 
and Babylonian throughout, they belong, that is, to the world in which he lived 
and moved ; yet the distinction remains as wide as ever between a Magian or Chal- 
daean soothsayer and a prophet of the living God. 

% Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, pp. 328, 704. 

<) Vitrixga, De Synagoga, p. 678, seq. Hillel and Schammai were the most 
illustrious teachers by parables before the time of our Saviour ; R. Meir imme- 
diately after. "With this last, as the tradition goes, the power of inventing para- 



48 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES 

be said of them as of him, that without a parable they taught nothing. 
The very formulas with which their parables were introduced were the 
same as those we find in the Gospels ; for instance, the question " Where- 
J unto shall I liken it ?" is of continual recurrence. But what then ? it 
was (not in the newness of the forms, but in the newness of the spirit, 
that the glory and superior excellency of Christ's doctrine consisted. 

As some may not be displeased to see what these Jewish parables 
are like, I will quote, not as sometimes has been done, the worst, but 
the best which I have had the fortune to meet. The following is occa- 
sioned by a question which has arisen, namely, Why the good so often 
die young ? It is answered, that God foresees that if they lived they 
would fall into sin. " To what is this like ? It is like a king who, 
walking in his garden, saw some roses which were yet buds, breathing 
an ineffable sweetness, He thought, If these shed such sweetness while 
yet they are buds, what will they do when they are fully blown % After 
a while, the king entered the garden anew, thinking to find the roses 
now blown, and to delight himself with their fragrance ; but arriving at 
the place, he found them pale and withered, and yielding no smell. He 
exclaimed with regret, 'Had I gathered them while yet tender and 
young, and while they gave forth their sweetness, I might have de- 
lighted myself with them, but now I have no pleasure in them.' The 
next year the king walked in his garden, and finding rosebuds scatter- 
ing fragrance, he commanded his servants, l Gather them, that I may 
(enjoy them, before they wither, as last year they did.' "* The next is 
ingenious enough, though a notable specimen of Jewish self-righteous- 
ness : — " A man had three friends : being summoned to appear before 
the king, he was terrified, and looked for an advocate : the first, whom 
he had counted the best, altogether refused to go with him ; another 
replied that he would accompany him to the door of the palace, but 
could not speak for him ; the third, whom he had held in least esteem, 
appeared with him before the king, and pleaded for him so well as to 
procure his deliverance. So every man has three friends, when sum- 
moned by death before God-, his Judge : the first, whom he most prized, 
his money, will not go with him a step ; the second, his friends and 
kinsmen, accompany him to the tomb, but no further, nor can they de- 
liver him in the judgment ; while the third, whom he had in least es- 
teem, the Law and good works, appear with him before the king and 
deliver him from condemnation."! But this is in a nobler strain ; it is 



bles notably declined. This is not hard to understand. The fig-tree of the Jewish 
people was withered, and could put forth no fruit any more. (Matt. xxi. 19.) 

* Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 682. 

t Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 1129. How different is this view of the Law 



THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES. 49 

suggested by those words, " In thy light shall we see light.' - As a 
man travelling by night kindled his torch, which, when it was extin- 
guished, he again lit, and again, hut at length exclaimed, l How long 
shall I weary myself in my way ? better to wait till the sun arise, and 
when the sun is shining I will pursue my journey' — so the Israelites 
were oppressed in Egypt, but delivered by Moses and Aaron. Again 
they were subdued by the Babylonians, when Chananiah, Misael, and 
Azariah delivered them. Again they were subdued by the Grecians, 
when Mattathias and his son's helped them. At length the Romans 
overcame them, when they cried to God, ' We are weary with the con- 
tinual alternation of oppression and deliverance ; we ask no further 
that mortal man may shine upon us, but God, who is holy and blessed 
for ever.' "* There is a fine one of the fox, who seeing the fish in great 
trouble, darting hither and thither, while the stream was being drawn 
with nets, proposed to them to leap on dry land. This is put in a 
Rabbi's mouth, who, when the Graeco-Syrian kings were threatening 
with death all who observed the law, was counselled by his friends to 
abandon it. He would say, " "We, like the fish in the stream, are indeed 
in danger now, but yet, while we continue in obedience to God, we are 
in our element ; but if, to escape the danger, we forsake that, then we i 
inevitably perish."f — Again, there is one of much tenderness, to explain! 
why a proselyte is dearer to the Lord than even a Levite. Such prose- 
lyte is compared to a wild goat, which, brought up in the desert, join3 
itself freely to the flock, and which is cherished by the shepherd with 
especial love ; since, that his flock, which from its youth he had put 
forth in the morning and brought back at evening, should love him, was 
nothing strange ; but this, — that the goat, brought up in deserts and ; 
mountains, should attach itself to him, demanded an especial return of: 
affection. J — There are besides these a multitude of briefer ones, deservr 



as an advocate with the Judge, from that given by our Lord (Matt. v. 25, 26,) who 
compares it to an adversary dragging us before a tribunal where we are certain to 
be worsted ! This parable, like so much else that is to be found' in the Rabbinical 
books, reappears in many quarters ; in the Eastern Romance, Barlaam and Jose- 
phat, c. 13 ; and among the traditional sayings of Mahomet. (See Von Hammer's 
Fhcndgruben d. Orients, v. 1. p. 315.) 
' * Schoettgen's Hot. Heb., v. 2, p. 691. 

f Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 189. 

X Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 377. This too on the resurrection Is good 
(Cocceius, Excerpt. Gem., p. 232) : R. Ammin replied to a Sadducee who said, 
Numquid pulvis vivet 1 — Rem tibi hac parabola explicabo. Rex quidam jusserat 
a servis suis palatium in loco, qui aqua et limo careret, extrui. Factum. Eo col- 
lapso, jussit id resedificari in loco ubi utriusque erat copia. Negant se posse. 
Turn ille iratus, Quum abesset aqua et limus, potuistis : nunc quum utrumque ad- 
sit, non possetis 1 

4 



50 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES 

ing the title of similitudes rather than of parables. Thus there is one, 
urging collection of spirit in prayer, to this effect : — " If a man brought 
a request to an earthly monarch, but instead of making it, were to turn 
aside and talk with his neighbor, might not the king be justly dis- 
pleased ?"* — In another, the death common to all, and the doom after 
death so different to each, is likened to a king's retinue entering a city 
at a single gate, but afterward lodged within it very differently, accord- 
ing to their several dignity. f There is a singular one to explain, why 
God has not told which command should have the greatest reward for 
its keeping. J — In another it is shown how body and soul are partners in 
sin, and so will justly be partners in punishment.^ 

These, with two or three more, which, bearing some resemblance to 
Evangelical parables, will be noted in their due places, are the most 
memorable which I have met. When these last are brought into 
comparison, I think it will be acknowledged that the resemblance is one 
lying merely on the surface, and is nothing so extraordinary, as some 
writers have given out. Some, indeed, have thought the similarity so 
great, as needed in some way or other to be accounted for, and have 
supposed that our Lord adopted those which he found in any way fitted 
for his purpose, remodelling and improving them as they passed under 
his hands. Others suppose that the Jewish parables are of later origin 
than those in the Gospels, and that the Rabbis, while they searched the 
Christian books for the purpose of ridiculing or gainsaying them, 
enriched themselves with their spoils, borrowing sayings and narrations 
which they afterwards used, concealing carefully the source from whence 



* Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 656. The same comparison with slight 
rariation occurs in Chrysostom {Horn. 1, in Oziam), and again with further modifi- 
cation, Horn. 51, in Matth. 

f Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 388. 

$ Ibid., v. 1, p. 187. 

§ Cocceius (Excerpt. Gem., p. 232) : Antoninus cum R. Jehuda sancto sic col- 
"loquutus aliquando est. Corpus inquit et anima a judicio se liberare possunt. 
Quomodo 1 Corpus dicat, Anima peccavit, nam ex quo ilia a me discessit, ecce 
lapidis instar sine sensu in sepulcro jacui. Anima autem dicat, Corpus peccavit, 
nam ex quo illius laxata sum nexu, ecce volito per afirem aviculae in morem. Ad 
haec Rabbi, Parabolam, iniquit, tabi dabo. Rex mortalis horto cuidam amcenissi- 
mo, in quo maturi fructus essent, duos custodes apposuit, claudumet caecum. 
Claudus, visis fructibus, caecum admonuit, ipsum uti in humeros reciperet, quo illoa 
decerperet, ct illi inter se devorarent. Inscdit igitur claudus caeci cervicibus, de- 
cerptosque fructus absumserunt. Aliquanto post tempore venit Domirus horti et 
de fructibus requisivit. Cum caecus, sibi oculos non esse ut videret, et claudus, 
sibi pedes deesse, ut accederet. Quid ille? Quum jussisset hunc illius humeri* 
sxcipi, utrumque simul judicavit et plexit. Consimiliter faciet Deus : anima cor- 
pori indita, pariter animam et corpus judicabit. 



THOSE IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 51 

they were derived.* But neither of these suppositions seems necessary. 
Lightfoot has a collection of such sayings under the title, — Wit stolen by 
tlw Jews out of the Gospel;] but neither here, nor in the parallels else- 
where adduced, is the resemblance so striking as to carry any persuasion 
to my mind, of the necessity, or even the probability, of a common origin. 
The hatred and scorn with which the Jews regarded the sacred books of 
the Christians, a hatred which extended to all foreign literature, but 
which was felt with especial force in regard to them, J makes this last 
supposition extremely improbable. 

The resemblance, after all, is merely such as must needs have four. I 
place, or at least could with difficulty have been avoided, when the' same 
external life, and the same outward nature, were used as the common 
storehouse, from whence images, illustrations, and examples were drawn 
alike by all. Perhaps it will be as well at once to consider one of these 
Talmudical parables, frequently compared with one spoken by our Lord. 
It is one of the best of those which pretend to any similarity with his, 
and has been sometimes likened to that latter part of the Marriage of 
the King's Son, which relates to the wedding garment. " The Kabbis 
have delivered what follows, on Eccl. xii. 7, where it is written, ' The 
spirit shall return unto G-od who gave it.' — He gave it to thee unspotted, 
see that thou restore it unspotted to him again. It is like a mortal 
king, who distributed royal vestments to his servants. Then those that 
were wise, folded them carefully up, and laid them by in the wardrobe ; 
but those that were foolish went their way, and, clothed in these 
garments, engaged in their ordinary work. After a while the king 
required his garments again ; the wise returned them white as they had 
received them ; but the foolish, soiled and stained. Then the king was 
well pleased with the wise, and said, £ Let the vestments be laid up in 
the wardrobe, and let these depart in peace ;' but he was angry with the 
foolish, and said, * Let the vestments be given to be washed, and those 
servants be cast into prison :' — so will the Lord do with the bodies of the 
righteous, as it is written, Isai. lvii. 2 ; with their souls, 1 Sam. xxxv. 
29; but with the bodies of the wicked, Isai. xlviii. 22; lvii. 21; and 
with their souls, 1 Sam. xxv. 29. "§ But with the exception of a king 

* So Carpzow, Storr, Lightfoot, and Pfeiffer {Tkeol. Jud. atque Mokamm., th. 
40-43.) 

t Erubkin, chap. 20. 

X Gfrorer's Urchristenthum, v. 1, p. 115, seq. 

§ Meuschen, N. T. ex Talm. Must., p. 117 ; see others, pp. Ill, 194, 195 ; and 
more in Westein's N. T, pp. 727, 765. Those given by Otto, a converted Jew. 
who aftarwards relapsed into Judaism, in a hook entitled Gali Razia, have been 
tampered with hy him for the purpose of making the resemblance between them 
and the Evangelical parables more close, else they would be remarkable indeed. 
(Ppejffer's Tkeol. Jud., th. 39.) 



52 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES 

appearing in each, and the matter of praise and condemnation turning 
on a garment, what resemblance is there here ? In fact, if we penetrate 
a little below the surface, there is more real similarity between this 
parable and that of the Talents, as in each case there is the restoration 
of a deposit, and a dealing with the servants according to their conduct 
in respect of that deposit. But then, how remote a likeness ! and how 
capricious the whole ! The distributing of garments which were not to 
be worn, and afterwards reclaiming them, — what analogy has this to 
any thing in actual life ? # — how different from the probability that a 
nobleman, going into a distant country, should distribute his goods to 
his servants, and returning, demand from them an account, f — There are 
no parables in the apocryphal Gospels. Indeed, where a moral element 
is altogether wanting, as in these worthless forgeries, it was only to be 
expected that this, as every other form of communicating spiritual truth, 
should be absent from them. 

This much in regard of the Jewish parables. Among the Fathers of 
the Christian Church there are not many, as far as I am aware, who 
have professedly constructed parables for the setting forth of spiritual 
mysteries. Two or three such parables are to be found in the third 
book of the Shepherd of Hermas. The whole of that third book is in- 
deed parabolical, as it sets forth spiritual truths under sensuous images, 
only it does this, chiefly in visions, that is, parables for the eye rather 
than for the ear. There are, however, parables in the strictest sense of 
the word ; this for example,! which is, I think, an improved form of the 
rabbinical parable last quoted : " Restore to the Lord the spirit entire as 
thou hast received it : for if thou gavest to a fuller a garment which was 
entire, and desiredst so to receive it again, but the fuller restored it to 
thee rent, wouldest thou receive it? wouldest thou not say in anger, 
' I delivered to thee my garment entire, wherefore hast thou torn it and 

* This, with so many other of the Rabbinical parables, sins almost against every 
rule given as needful to be observed in such an invented tale, if it is to carry any 
power of conviction with it, by the author of the treatise, Ad Herennium, i. 9 : 
Verisimilis narratio erit, si ut mos, ut opinio, ut natura postulat, dicemus ; si spatia 
temporum, personarum dignitates, consiliorum rationes, locorum opportunilatcs 
constabunt, ne refelli possit, aut temporis parum fuisse, aut causam nullam, aut 
locum idoneum non fuisse, aut homines ipsos facere aut pati non potuisse. — Bat 
how wonderfully do all these requisites meet in the parables of the New Testa- 
ment ! 

t Unger (De Parab. Jes. Nat., p. 162) observes that he has gone into this com- 
parison of the Evangelical with the Jewish parables, — Partim ut absterreremur it 
solito rabbinicos locos doctrinse Jesu quo'dammodo aequiparandi pruritu ac levitate, 
interdum ad interpretationem juvandam parum utili. . . . partim ut inde magis ag- 
nosceremUs parabolarum Jesu praestantiam. 

t Simil. 9, 32, cf. Simil. 5, 2. 



THOSE IN THE SCRIPTURES. 53 

made it useless ? It is now, on account of the rent which thou hast 
made in it, of no more service to me.' If thou then grievcst for thy 
garment, and complainest because thou receivest it not entire again, 
how, thinkest thou, will the Lord deal with thee, who gave thee a perfect 
spirit, but which spirit thou hast marred, so that it can be of no more 
service to its Lord? for it became useless when it was corrupted by 
thee." — There are a good many parables, regularly brought forward as 
such, in the writings of Ephraem Syrus, but such of these as I am 
acquainted with, are very far from felicitous : indeed they could scarcely 
be tamer than they are.* — Eadmer, a disciple of Anselm, has preserved 
a sort of basket of fragments from his sermons and his table-talk. 
Among these there are so many of his similitudes and illustrations as 
to give a name to the whole collection.! There are not a few complete 
parables here, though none perhaps of that beauty which the works that 
come directly from him might have led us to expect. 

Far better are those interspersed through the Greek religious romance 
of *the seventh or eighth century, Barlaam and Josaphat, ascribed, with- 
out, I believe, any sufficient grounds, to St. John of Damascus, and often 
printed with his works. They have been justly admired,:): yet more 



* This is the best that I know, of which, however, I only judge in its Latin 
translation : Duo homines proficiscebantur ad quandam civitatem, quae stadiis abe- 
rat triginta. Cum autem jam duo aut tria confecissent stadia, obtulit se in via 
locus, in quo sylvae et arbores erant umbrosae, fluentaque aquarum, multaque ibi- 
dem delectatio. Qui dum contemplarentur ista, alter quidem ad urbem spectan- 
dam contendens, instar cursoris locum praeteribat ; alter vero, cam constitisset ut 
contemplaretur, remansit. Deinde cum prodire jam vellet extra arborum umbram, 
calores timuit, atque ita diutius ibidem loci dum remaneret, locique simul amceni- 
tate sese delectaret atque occuparet, bestia ex iis quae in sylva commorantur pro- 
diit, apprehensumque ipsum pertraxit in suum antrum : alter vero qui neque iter 
neglexisset, neque forma arborum se detineri passus esset, recta ad urbem perrexit. 
Seo also Partznes., 21, 28. 

f De S. Anselmi Similitudinibus. It is published at the end of the Benedict. 
edit, of St. Anselm. I do not know whether I can find a better than this, upon 
the keeping: of the heart with all diligence, of which, however, I can quote no more 
than is necessary for giving an insight into the whole (c. 41) : Cor etenim nostrum 
simile est molendino semper molenti, quod Dominus quidam cuidam servo suo cus- 
todiendum dedit : praecipiens ei ut suam tantum annonam in eo molat, et ex eodem 
quod moluerit, ipse vivat. Yerum illi servo quidam inimicatur, qui si quando 
illud vacuum invenerit, aut arenam ibi statiri projicit, quae illud dissipat ; aut 
picam, quae conglutinat ; aut aliquid quod fcedat ; aut paleam quae tantum illud 
occupat. Servus igitur ille si molendinum suum bene custodierit, Dominique sui 
taatum annonam in illo moluerit, et Domino suo servit, sibique ipsi victum acqui- 
rit. noc itaque molendinum semper aliquid molens cor est humanum, assidu£ 
aliquid cogitans. Cf. c. 42, 46. 

% See Dunlop's History of Fiction, London, 1845, p. 40, seq. 



54 ON OTHER PARABLES BESIDES 

than one of them is certainly not original, being easily traced up to ear 
lier sources. A -very interesting one will be found in the note below,* 
Those which are entitled parables in the writings of St. Bernard,! 
which, whether they be his or no, have much of beauty and instruction 
in them, are rather allegories than parables, and so do not claim here to 
be considered. But if parables, which are professedly such, are not of 
frequent occurrence in the works of the early Church writers, the para- 
bolical element is, notwithstanding, very predominant in their teaching. 
This was only to be expected, especially in their homilies, which are 
popular in the truest and best sense of the word. What boundless stores, 
for instance, of happy illustration, which might with the greatest ease 
be thrown into the forms of parables, are laid up in the writings of St. 
Augustine. One is only perplexed amid the endless variety what in- 
stances to select: but we may take this one as an example. He is 
speaking of the Son of Grod and the sinner in the same world, and ap- 
pearing under the same conditions of humanity ; " But," he proceeds, 

* TJrbem quandam niagnani exstitisse accepi, in qua cives hoc in more et insti- 
tuto positum habebant, ut peregrinuni quendam et ignotum virum, ac legum con- 
suetudinum civitatis omnino rudem et ignarum acciperent, eumque sibi ipsis regem 
constituerent, penes quern per unius anni curriculum rerum omnium potestas esset, 
quique libere et sine ullo impedimento quicquid vellet, faceret. Post autem, dum 
ille omni prorsus cura vacuus degeret, atque in luxu et deliciis sine ullo metu 
versaretur, perpetuumque sibi regnum fore existimaret, repente adversus cum 
insurgentes, regiamque ipsi vestem detrahentes, ac nudum per totam urbem tan- 
quam in triumphum agentes, in magnam quandam et longe remotam insulam eum 
relegabant, in qua nee victu nee indumentis suppetentibus, fame ac nuditate miser- 
rjaae premebatur, voluptate scilicet atque animi hilaritate, quae praeter spem ipsi 
concessa fuerat, in maerorem rursus praster spem omnem et expectationem commu- 
tata. Contigit ergo ut pro antiquo civium illorum more atque instituto vir quidam 
magno ingenii acumine prasditus ad regnum ascisceretur. Qui statim subita ea 
felicitate, quae ipsi obtigerat, haudquaquam prseceps abreptus, nee eorum qui ante 
se regiam dignitatem obtinuerant, misereque ejecti fuerant, incuriam imitatus, 
animo anxio et solicito id agitabat, quonam pacto rebus suis optime consuleret. 
Dum ergo crebra meditatione baec secum versaret, per sapientissimum quendam 
consiliarium de civium consuetudine ac perpetui exilii loco certior factus est : quo- 
nam pacto sine ullo errore ipse sibi cavere deberet, intellexit. Cum igitur hoc 
cognovissct, futurumque propediem, ut ad illam insulam ablegaretur, atque adven- 
titium illud et alienum regnum aliis relinqueret, patefactis thesauris suis, quorum 
tunc promptum ac liberum usum babebat, aurique atque argenti ac preciosorum 
lapidum ingenti mole famulis quibusdam quos fidissimos babebat, tradita, ad earn 
insulam, ad quam abducendus erat, prsemisit. Vertente autem anno cives commota 
seditione nudum eum quemadmodum superiores reges, in exilium miserunt. Ac 
caeteri quidem amentes, et brevis temporis reges, gravissima fame laborabant : ille 
contra qui opes suas praemiserat, in perpetua rerum copia vitam ducens, atque 
infinita voluptate fruens, pcrfidorum ac sceleratorum civium metu prorsus abjocto, 
sapientissimi consilii sui nomine beatum se praedicabat. Compare 1 Tim. vi. 19. 

t In the Benedictine edition, v. 1, p. 1251, seq. 



THOSE m THE SCRIPTURES. 55 

ff how great a difference there is between the prisoner in his dungeon 
and the visitor that has come to see him. They are both within the walls 
of the dungeon : one who did not know might suppose them under equal 
restraint, but one is the compassionate visitor who can use his freedom 
when he will, the other is fast bound there for his offences. So great is 
the difference between Christ, the compassionate visitor of man, and 
man himself, the criminal in bondage for his offences."* Or rebuking 
them that dare in their ignorance to find fault with the arrangements of 
Providence* : — " If you entered the workshop of a blacksmith, you would 
not dare to find fault with his bellows, anvils, hammers. If you had — - 
not the skill of a workman, but the consideration of a man, what would 
you say ? ' It is not without cause the bellows are placed here ; the 
artificer knew, though I do not know, the reason.' You would not ven- 
ture to find fault with the blacksmith in his shop, and do you dare to 
find fault with G-od in the world ?"f — Chrysostom, too, is very rich in 
such similitudes, which need nothing to be parables, except that they 
should be presented for such ; as for instance, when speaking of the ex- 
altation of outward nature, the redemption of the creature, which shall 
accompany the manifestation of the sons of G-od, he says, " To what is 
the creation like ? It is like a nurse that has brought up a royal child, 
and when he ascend,s his paternal throne, she too rejoices with him, 
and is partaker of the benefit."^ But the field here opening before us 
is too wide to enter on.§ It is of parables strictly so called, and not all 
of these, || but of such only as are found in the New Testament, that 



* In Ep. 1 JoL, Tract. 2. 

j- Enarr. in Ps. cxlviii. He has something perhaps more nearly approaching 
in its form to a parable than either of these, Enarr. in Ps. ciii. 26. 

X Horn, in Rom. viii. 19. 

§ I will not, however, deny myself the pleasure of transcribing the following 
parable from H. de Sto. Victore {De Sacram., 1. 2, pars 14, c. 8): Pater quidam 
contumacem filium quasi cum magno furore expulit, ut ita afflictus humiliari dis- 
ceret. Sed illo in contumacia sua persistente, quadam secreta dispensatione con- 
silii a patre mater mittitur, ut non quasi a patre missa, sed quasi materna per se 
pietate ducta veniens muliebri lenitate obstinatum demulceat, contumacem ad 
humilitatem flectat, vehementer patrem iratum nuntiet, se tamen interventuram 
spondeat, consilium salutis suggerat, .... non nisi magnis precibus patrem pla- 
cari posse dicat ; causam tamen rei se suscepturam asserat, et ad bonam finem 
rem omnem se perducturam promittat. The mother here he presently explains 
as divine Grace. — Readers that have at hand Poiret's remarkable work, (Economi 
Divina, may find a parable (v. 2, p. 554), 1. 5, c. 9, § 26, which is too long to 
quote, but is .worthy a reference ; and another in Salmeron's Serm. in Parab. 
Evang., p. 300. 

|| One Persian, however, I will quote for its deep significance. I take it from 
Deslongchamps' Fables Indiennes, p. 64. The Persian moralist is speaking of the 
manner in which frivolous and sensual pleasures cause men to forget all the deeper 



56 PARABLES KOT IN THE SCRIPTURES. 

it is my wish- to speak : and these I would now proceed severally and in 
order to consider. 

interests of their spiritual being : On ne peut mieux assimiler le genre humain qu'a 
un homme qui, fuyant un Elephant furieux, est descendu dans un puits, il s'est 
accroche' a deux rameaux qui en couvrent 1' orifice ; et ses pieds se sont pose's sur 
quelque chose qui forme une saillie dans l'interieur du meme puits : ce sont quatre 
serpens qui sortent leurs t6tes hors de leur repaires ; ' il appergoit au fond du puits, 
un dragon qui gueule ouverte n'attend que l'instant de sa chtite pour le devorer. 
Ses regards se portent vers les deux rameaux auquels il est suspendu, et il voit a 
leur naissance deux rats, l'un noir, Tautre blanc, qui ne cessent de les ronger. Un 
autre objet cependant se presente a sa vue : c'est une ruche remplie de mouches a 
miel, il se met a manger de leur miel, et le plaisir qu'il y trouve lui fait oublier les 
serpens sur lesquels reposent ses pieds, les rats qui rongent les rameaux auxquels 
il est suspendu, et le danger dont il est menace^ a chaque instant, de devenir la 
proie du dragon qui guette le moment de sa chute pour le deVorer. Son e'tourde-' 
rie et son illusion ne cessent qu'avec son existence. Ce puits c'est le monde rempli 
de dangers et de miseres ; les quatre serpens ce sont les quatres humeurs dont le 
melange forme notre corps, mais qui, lorsque leur Iquilibre est rompu, deviennent 
autant de poisons mortels ; ces deux rats, l'un noir, l'autre blanc, ce sont le jour et 
la nuit, dont la succession consume la dure'e de notre vie ; le dragon c'est le terme 
inevitable qui nous attend tous ; le miel, enfin, ce sont les plaisirs des ses dont la 
fausse douceur, nous seduit et nous d€tourne du chemin oh nous devons marcher. 
This is again, with some slight alterations, to be found among the specimens of the 
great mystical poet of Persia, Dschelaleddin, given by Von Hammer ( Gesch. d. 
schon. Redek. Pers., p. 183), in Barlaam and Josaphat, c. 12, and elsewhere. In 
S. de Sacy's Chrest. Arabe (v. 2, p. 364) there is a parable by an Arabian author 
which bears some resemblance, particularly at its opening, to that of the talents ; 
and in Tholuck's Bluthensammlung aus d. Morgenl. Myst., there are several para- 
bles from the mystical poets of Persia, for instance, a beautiful one, p. 106. 



PARABLES. 



I. 

THE SOWER. 



Matt. xiii. 3-8, and 18-23; Mark iv. 4-8, and 14-21; 
Luke viii. 5-8, and 11-15. 



It is evidently the purpose of St. Matthew to present to his readers 
the parables recorded in the thirteenth chapter of his G-ospel as the first 
which the Lord spoke ; with this of the Sower he commenced a manner 
of teaching which he had not hitherto used. This is sufiiciently indi- 
cated by the question which the disciples asked, " Why speakest thou 
unto them in parables?" (ver. 10), and the answer which our Lord gave 
(ver. 1 1-17), in which he justifies his use of this method of teaching, and 
declares the purpose which he had in adopting it ; and no less so, when 
he seems to consider this parable as the fundamental one, on the right 
understanding of which, would depend their comprehension of all which 
were to follow — " Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know 
all parables?" (Mark iv. 13.) And as this was the first occasion on 
which he brought forth these things new out of his treasure (see ver. 22), 
so was it the occasion on which he brought them forth with the largest 
hand. We have not any where else in the Gospels so rich a group of 
parables assembled together, so many and so costly pearls strung upon 
a single thread. The only passage that will bear comparison is chap- 
ters xv. and xvi. of St. Luke, where there are recorded five parables that 
were all apparently spoken on the same occasion. The seven that are 
here recorded divide themselves into two smaller groups. — the first four 
being spoken to the multitude while he taught them out of the ship, — 
the three last, as it would seem, on the same day, in the narrower circle 
of his disciples at his own home. 



58 THE SOWER. 

Before- proceeding to consider the parables themselves, let us seek to 
realize to ourselves, and to picture vividly to our minds the aspect which 
the outward nature wore, and what the scenery was with which our 
blessed Lord and the listening multitudes were surrounded. St. Mat- 
thew tells us that " Jesus went out from the house," probably at Caper- 
naum, which was the city where he commonly dwelt after his open min- 
istry began (Ma"tt. iv. 13), "his own city" (Matt. ix. 1), and which was 
close by the sea-shore,* and going out he " sat down by the sea-side," 
that is, by the lake of G-enesareth, the scene of so many incidents in his 
ministry. This lake (now Bahr Tabaria) goes by many names in the 
Gospels. It is often called simply "the sea" (Mark iv. 1), or "the 
Sea of Galilee" (Matt. xv. 29, John vi. 1), or, "the sea of Tiberias" 
(John xxi. 1), though indeed it was an inland lake of no very great ex- 
tent, being but about sixteen miles in length, and no more than six in 
breadth. But it might well claim regard for its beauty, if not for its 
extent : the Jewish writers would have it that it was beloved of God 
above all the waters of Canaan, and indeed almost all ancient authors 
that have mentioned it, as well as modern travellers, speak in glowing 
terms of the beauty and rich fertility of its banks. Hence sometimes 
its name Genesareth has been derived, which some interpret " the gar- 
den of riches,"f though the derivation, I believe, is insecure. And even 
now, when the land is crushed under the rod of Turkish misrule, many 
traces of its former beauty remain, many evidences of the fertility which 
its shores will again assume in the day which assuredly cannot be very 
far off, when that rod shall be lightened from them. It is true that the 
olive-gardens and vineyards, which once crowned the high and romantic 
hills with which it is bounded on the east and the west, have disap- 
peared ; but the citron, the orange, and the date-tree, are still found in 
rich abundance ; and in the higher regions, the products of a more tem- 
perate zone meet together with these ; — while lower down, its banks are 
still covered with aromatic shrubs, and its waters are still, as of old, 
sweet and wholesome to drink, and always cool, clear, and transparent 
to the very bottom, and as gently breaking on the fine white sand with 
which its shores are strewn as they did of old, when the feet of the Son 
of God trod those sands, or walked upon those waters.f On the edge of 

* TV Trapa&aXao-crtav, probably so called to distinguish it from another Caper- 
naum on the brook Kishon. 

f Jerome (De Nomin. Heb.) makes Gennesar=hortus principinm. 

$ Josephus (Bell. Jad., 3. 10, 7) rises into high poetical animation while he is 
describing its attractions ; and in Roiir's Palestina (termed by Goethe, a glorious 
book), p. 67, there is a singularly beautiful description of this lake and the neigh- 
boring country. See also Lightfoot's Chorograph. Century, c. 70, 79, and Meu- 
«chen, Nov. Test, ex Talm. Must., p. 151. Yet Robinson (Bibl. Researches, v. 3, 



THE SOWER. 59 

this beautiful lake the multitude were assembled, in such numbers, that 
probably, as on another occasion (Luke v. 1), they pressed upon the 
Lord, so that he found it convenient to enter into a ship ; and putting off 
a little from the shore, he taught them from it, speaking " many things 
unto them in parables." 

First in order is the parable of the Sower. It rests, like so many 
others, on one of the common familiar doings of daily life. The Lord 
lifted up, it may be, his eyes, and saw at no great distance an husband- 
man scattering his seed in the furrows. As it belongs to the essentially 
popular nature of the Gospels, that parables should be found in them 
rather than in the Epistles, where indeed they never appear, so it belongs 
to the popular character of the parable, that it should thus rest upon the 
familiar doings of common life, the matters which occupy 

" The talk 
Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk 
Of the world's business ;" 

while at the same time the Lord, using these to set forth eternal and 
spiritual truths, ennobles them, showing, as he does, how they continu- 
ally reveal and set forth the deepest mysteries of his kingdom. " A sower 
went forth to sow" — what a dignity and significance have these few 
words, used in the sense in which the Lord here uses them, given in all 
after-times to the toils of the husbandman in the furrow. 

The comparison of the relations of the teacher and the taught to those 
between the sower and the soil, and of the truth communicated to the 
seed sown, is one so deeply grounded in the truest analogies between the 
worlds of nature and of spirit, that we must not wonder to find it of fre- 
quent recurrence, not merely in Scripture (1 Pet. i. 23 ; 1 John iii. 9) ; 
but in the works of all the wiser heathens,* of all who have realized in any 

p. 253) gives a far less enthusiastic account. He speaks indeed of the lake as a 
" beautiful sheet of limpid water in a deeply depressed basin ;" but the form of the 
hills, " regular and almost unbroken heights" (p. 312), was to his eye " rounded 
and tame :" and as it was the middle summer when his visit was made, the verdure 
of the spring had already disappeared, and he complains of nakedness in the 
general aspect of the scenery. 

* Grotius has here a particularly rich collection of parallel passages from Greek 
and Latin writers ; he or others have adduced such from Aristotle, Cicero (Tusc. 
ii. 5), Plutarch, Quintilian, Philo, and many more ; but it would not be worth 
while merely to repeat their quotations. I do not observe that any have this one 
from Seneca (Ep. 73) : Deus ad homines venit, imo (quod propius est) in homines 
venit. Semina in corporibus humanis disperso sunt, quae si bonus cultor excipit, 
similia origini prodeunt, et paria his ex quibus orta sunt surgunt : si malus, non 
aliter quam humus sterilis ac palustris necat, ac deinde creat purgamenta pro 
fVugibus. 



60 THE SOWER. 

measure what teaching means, and what sort of influence the spirit of 
one man ought to seek to exercise on the spirits of his fellows, commu 
nicating to them living and expanding truths. While all teaching that 
is worthy the name is such, while all words, even of men, that are really 
words, are as seeds, with a power to take root in the minds and hearts 
of those that hear them, contain germs in them that only by degrees 
develope themselves ;* in a much higher sense must this be true of the 
words, or rather of the Word of Grod, which he spake who was himself 
the Seminal Word which he communicated.! Best right of all to the 
title of seed has that Word, which exercises not merely a partial working 
on the hearts in which it is received, but wholly transforms and renews 
them, — that Word by which men are born anew into the kingdom of 
God, and of which the effects endure for ever. I cannot doubt that the 
Lord intended to set himself forth as the chief sower of the seed, (not, 
of course, to the exclusion of the apostles and their successors,) that here, 
as well as in the next parable, he that soweth the good seed is the Son of 
man ; and this, even though he nowhere in the three interpretations of 
the present one announces himself as such.J Indeed, it is difficult to 
see how we can stop short of him, when we are seeking to give the full 
meaning to the words, u A sower went forth to soio."§ His entrance 
into the world was a going forth to sow ; the word of the kingdom, 
which word he first proclaimed, was his seed ; the hearts of men his 
soil ; — others only were able to sow because he had sown first ; they did 
but carry on the work which he had auspicated and begun. 

" And when he sotved, some seeds fell by the way-side [and it tvas 
trodden down (Luke viii. 5)], and thefoivls came and devoured tJiem up." 
Some, that is, fell on the hard footpath, or road, where the glebe was 
not broken, and so it could not sink down in the earth, but lay exposed 
on the surface to the feet of passers by, till at length it became an easy 

* Thus Shakspeare, of a man of thoughtful wisdom : 

" His plausive words 
He scattered not in ears, but grafted them 
To grow there and to bear." 

t Salmeron very beautifully (Scrm. in Par. Evang., p. 30) : Quemadmodum 
Christus Medicus est et medicina, Sacerdos et hostia, Redemptor et redemptio, 
Legislator et lex, Janitor et ostium, ita Sator et semen. Nee enim est aliud Evan- 
gelium ipsum, quam Christus incarnatus, natus, praedicans, moriens, resurgens, 
mittens Spiritum Sanctum, congregans Ecclesiam, illamque sanctificans et gu- 
bernans. 

X See, however, the arguments adduced to the contrary hy Mr. Greswell {Exp, 
of the Par., v. 5, part 2, p. 238). 

§ Salmeron (Serm. in Parab., p. 29) : Dicitur exire per operationem Incarna- 
tionis. qui indutus processit tanquam agricola aptam pluvise, soli et frigori vestem 
asauroens, cum tamen Rex esset. 



THE SOWER. 61 

prey to the birds, such as in the East are described as following in large 
flocks the husbandman, to gather up, if they caD, the seed-corn which he 
has scattered. These words are explained by Christ himself; for of this 
parable we have an authentic interpretation, one that has come from his 
own lips j and which is important, as has been observed, not merely in 
its bearings on the parable itself, as enabling us to feel that we are 
treading on sure ground, but also as giving us a key to the explanation 
of other parables, instructing us how far we may safely go in the appli- 
cation of their minor circumstances : these words are thus explained : — 
u When any one heareth tJie ivord of the kingdom and under standeth it 
not, tlven cometh the wicked one, and catcheth aivay that which was sown 
in his heart." St. Luke brings out Satan yet more distinctly as, the 
adversary and hinderer of the kingdom of God (of which there will be 
fuller opportunity of speaking in the following parable), by adding the 
reason why he snatches the word away, — " lest they should believe and 
be saved" The words which St. Matthew alone records, " and under- 
standeth it not," are very important for the comprehending of what this 
first state of mind and heart is, in which the word of God is unproduc- 
tive of any, even transitory, effect. The man understands it not ; he 
does not recognize himself as standing in any relation to the word which 
he hears, or to the kingdom of grace which that word proclaims. All 
that speaks of man's connection with a higher invisible world, all that 
speaks of sin, of redemption, of holiness, is unintelligible to him, and 
wholly without significance. But how has he come to this state ? He 
has brought himself to it ; he has exposed his heart as a common road 
to every evil influence of the world, till it has become hard as a pave- 
ment* — till he has laid waste the very soil in which the word of God 
should have taken root ; and he has not submitted it to the ploughshare 
of the law, which would have broken it ; which, if he had suffered it tc 
do the work which God appointed it to do, would have gone before, pre 
paring that soil to receive the seed of the Gospel. But what renders his 
case the more hopeless, and takes away even a possibility of the word 
germinating there is, that besides the evil condition of the soil, there is 
also One watching to take advantage of that evil condition, to use every 
weapon that man puts into his hands, against man's salvation ; and he, 
lest by possibility such a hearer might believe and be saved, sends his 
ministers in the shape of evil thoughts, worldly desires, carnal lusts, 
and by their help, as St. Mark records it, a immediately talieth away the 
word that was sown in their Jiearts." And the Lord concludes, " This 
is he that receiveth seed by the way -side." 

* II. de Sto Yictore (Annott. in Matth.) : Via est cor frequenti malaruni cogita- 
tionem transitu attritum et arefactum. Corn, a Lap : Via est trita secularis et 
licentioris vitae consuetudo. 



62 THE SOWER. 

Other of the seed, which the sower scattered, appeared to have at 
first, but in the end had not truly any better success. For we read 
" Some fell upon stony places ; ivhere they had not much earth; and forth 
with they sprung tip, because tJiey had no deepness of earth, and when 
tlie sun ivas up* they were scorc/ied, and because they had no root they 
withered aivayP The " stony places''' here are to be explained by the 
M rock 11 in St. Luke, and it is important, for the right understanding of 
the parable, that the words in St. Matthew, or rather in our translation 
of them (for u rocky places," — as indeed the Rhemish version has it, — 
would have avoided the possibility of any mistake), do not lead us 
astray. A soil mingled with stones is not meant ; for these, however 
numerous or large, would not certainly hinder the roots from striking 
deeply downward, as those roots, with the instinct which they possess, 
would feel and find their way, penetrating between the interstices of the 
stones, and would so reach the moisture below. But what is meant is 
ground, where a thin superficial coating of mould covered the surface of 
a rock, which stretched below it and presented an impassable barrier, 
rendering it wholly impossible that the roots should penetrate beyond a 
certain depth, or draw up any supplies of nourishment from beneath, f 
While the seed had not fallen into deep earth, therefore the plant the 
sooner appeared above the surface ; and while the rock below hindered 
it from striking deeply downward, it put forth its energies the more lux- 
uriantly in the stalk. It sprung up without delay, but was not rooted 
in that deep moist soil which would have enabled it to resist the scorch- 
ing heat of the sun, and being smitten by that, withered and died. 

Concerning the signification of this part of the parable we learn, 
1 They on tlie rock are they, which, ivlien iliey hear, receive tlie ivord with 
joy ; and these have no root, which for a ivhile believe, and in time of 
temptation fall away." Though the issue is the same in this case as in 
the last, the promise is very different ; so far from the heart of this man- 
ner of hearer appearing irreceptive of the truth, the good news of the 
kingdom is received at once, and with gladness.^ But alas ! the joy 

* 'AvareWeiv once occurs transitively in the New Testament, Matt. v. 45 ; so 
Gen. iii. 18, Isai. xlv. 8 (lxx). It is especially used, as in this passage, of the 
rising of the sun or stars, Num. xxiv. 17 ; Isai. lx. 1 ; Mai. iv. 2 ; hut also of the 
springing up of plants from the earth, Gen. xix. 25 ; Isai. xliv. 4 ; Ezek. xvii. 6 ; 
Ps. xci. 7 ; and so, e|oj/eTej\e, in this present parahle. In either sense the title 
avctToX-h belongs to Christ, and has been applied to him in both ; as he is The 
Branch ('AyaToA^, Zech. vi. 12, lxx.), and as he is the Day-spring (Luke i. 78). 

f Bengel : Non innuunter lapides sparsim in agro jacentes, sed petra sive saxura 
continuum, sub terra? super ficie tenui. 

% Cocceius : Statim loetari est malum signum, quia non potest non verbum Dei, 
si recte percipiatur, in homino operari displicentiam sui, aywvlav, angustias, coi 
contritum, spiritum fractum, famem ac sitim, denique luctum, ut Servator docuit. 
Matt. v. 



THE SOWER. 63 

thus suddenly conceived is not, as the sequel too surely proves, a joy 
springing up from the contemplation of the greatness of the benefit, even 
after all the counterbalancing costs and hazards and sacrifices are taken 
into account, but a joy arising from an overlooking and leaving out of 
calculation those costs and hazards — which circumstance fatally differ- 
ences the joy of this class of hearers from that of the finder of the trea- 
sure (Matt. xiii. 44), who for the joy thereof, went and sold all that he 
had, that he might purchase the field which contained the treasure — that 
is, was willing to deny himself all things, and to suffer all things, that 
he might win Christ. "We have rather here a state of mind not stub- 
bornly repelling the truth, but wofully lacking in all deeper earnestness, 
such as that of the great multitudes that went with Jesus, not consider- 
ing what his discipleship involved, — those multitudes to whom he turned 
and told at large, and in the strongest language, what the conditions of 
that discipleship were (Luke xiv. 25-33.) exhorting them beforehand 
that they should count the cost. This is exactly what the hearer here 
described has not done; whatever was fair and beautiful in Christianity 
as it first presents itself, had attracted him — its sweet and comfortable 
promises,* the moral loveliness of its doctrines ; but not its answer to 
the deepest needs of the human heart : as neither when he received the 
word with gladness, had he contemplated the having to endure hardness 
in his warfare with sin and Satan and the world. — " So hath he not root 
in himself, but dureth for a while, for ivlien tribidation or persecution 
ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended? It is not here, as 
in the last case, that Satan can merely come and take the word out of 
the heart without further trouble ; that word has found some place there, 
and it needs that he bring some hostile influences to bear against it. 
What he brings in the present case are outward or inward trials, these 
being compared to the burning heat of the sun.f It is true, that gene- 
rally the light and warmth of the sun are used to set forth the genial 
and comfortable workings of God's grace, as eminently Mai. iv. 2 ; but 
not always, for see, beside the passage before us, Ps. cxxi. G ; Isai. xlix. 
10 ; Rev. vii. 16. As that heat, had the plant been rooted deeply 
enough, would have furthered its growth, and hastened its ripening, fit- 
ting it for the sickle and the barn — so these tribulations would have fur- 
thered the growth in grace of the true Christian, and ripened him for 
heaven. But as the heat scorches the blade which has no deepness of 

* Bede : Ilia sunt praecordia quae dulcedine tantum auditi sermonis ac proniissis 
caelestibus ad horam delectantur 

f It was with the rising of the sun, that the /cavow, the hot desert wind, began 
commonly to blow, the deadly effects of which on all vegetation are often al- 
luded to. (Jon. iv. 8 : Jam. i. 11.) Plants thus smitten with the heat are called 
torrefacta, 7]\iov(x.*va. 



64 THE SOWER. 

earth, and has sprung up on a shallow ground, so the troubles and afflic- 
tions which would have strengthened a true faith, cause a faith which 
was merely temporary to fail.* When these afflictions for the word's 
sake arrive he is offended, as though some strange thing had happened 
to him:f for then are the times of sifting.J and of winnowing; and then 
too every one that has no root, or as St. Matthew describes it, no root in 
himself ] no inward root,§ falls away. 

The having that inward root here answers to the having a foundation 
on the rock Matt. vii. 25, to the having oil in the vessels elsewhere. 
(Matt. xxv. 4.) And the image itself is not an unfrequent one in 
Scripture. (Ephes. iii. 17; Col. ii. 7 ; Jer. xvii. 8; Hos. ix. 16.) It 
has a peculiar fitness and beauty, — for as the roots of a tree are out of 
sight, yet from them it derives its firmness and stability, so upon the 
hidden life of the Christian, that life which is out of the sight of other 
men, his firmness and stability depend ; and as it is through the hidden 
roots that the nourishment is drawn up to the stem and branches, and 
the leaf continues green, and the tree does not cease from bearing fruit, 
even so in the Christian's hidden life, that life which " is hid with Christ 
in God," lie the sources of his strength and of his spiritual prosperity. 
Such a root in himself had Peter, who, when many others were offended 
and drew back, exclaimed, " To whom shall we go ? thou hast the words 
of eternal life." (John vi. 68.) This faith that Christ and no other had 
the words of eternal life and blessedness, was what constituted his root, 
causing him to stand firm when so many fell away. So again when the 
Hebrew Christians took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing in 
themselves that they had " in heaven a better and an enduring substance" 
(Heb. x. 34), this knowledge, this faith concerning their unseen inherit 
ance, was the root which enabled them joyfully to take that loss, and no* 
to draw back unto perdition, as so many had done. Compare 2 Cor. iv 
17, 18, where again the faith in the unseen eternal things is the root, 

* Augustine is particularly rich in striking sayings on the different effects 
which tribulations will have on those that are rooted and grounded in the faith, 
and those that are otherwise. Thus {Enarr. in Ps. xxi.) speaking of the furnace 
of affliction : Ibi est aurum, ibi est palea, ibi ignis in angusto operatur. Ignis ille 
non est diversus, et diversa agit, paleam in cinerem vertit, auro sordes tollit. See 
for the same image Chrysostom, Ad Pop. Antioch., Horn. 4, 1. 

f See Job viii. 11, 12, and Umbreit's Note. 

X The very word " tribulation" with which we have rendered the dAtyts of the 
original, rests upon this image — tribulatio from tribulum, the threshing-roller, and 
thus used to signify those afflictive processes by which in the moral discipline of 
men God separates their good from their evil, their wheat ft Dm their chaff. 

<j It is with allusion to this passage no doubt that men of faith are called in the 
Greek Fathers, fra&vftlfa, vo\vffiCoi. Compare with this division of the parable, 
the Shepherd of Hennas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 21. 



THE SOWER. 65 

which, as St. Paul declares, enables him to count the present affliction 
light, and to endure to the end. Demas, on the other hand, lacked that 
root. It might at first sight seem as if he would be more correctly 
ranged under the third class of hearers ; since he forsook Paul, "having 
loved this present world." But when we examine more closely what was 
Paul's condition at Rome at the moment when Demas left him, we find 
it to have been one of great outward trial and danger ; so that it would 
seem more probable that the immediate cause of his so going back, was 
the tribulation which came for the word's sake.* 

But thirdly — of the seed which the sower cast, '•''some fell among 
thorns, and tlie thorns sprung up and choked it" or as Wiclif has, 
"strangled it,"f so that, as St. Mark adds, "it yielded no fruit?' 1 It is 
not that this seed fell so much among thorns that were full grown, as in 
ground where the roots of these had not been carefully extirpated, in 
ground which had not been thoroughly purged and cleansed ; otherwise 
it could not be said in the words of Luke, " that the thoi'ns sprang up 
with it." They grew together; only the thorns overtopped the good 
seed, shut them out from the air and light, drew away from their roots 
the moisture and richness of earth, which should have nourished them, 
and thus they pined and dwindled in the shade. They grew dwarfed' 
and stunted, for the best of the soil did not feed them — forming indeed- 
a blade, but unable to form a full corn in the ear, bringing no fruit 
to perfection. It is not here, as in the first case, that there was no soil, 
or none deserving the name — nor yet as in the second case, that there- 
was a poor or shallow soil. Here there was no lack of soil, it might be 
good soil ; but what was deficient was a careful husbandry, a diligent 
eradication of the mischievous growths, which, unless extirpated, would 
oppress and strangle whatever sprung up side by side with them. 

Of this part of the parable we have the following explanation — "He 
also that received seed among tlie thorns, is he that heareth the ivord, and 
tlie cares\ of this ivorld and tlie deceitfulness of riches land tlie lusts of 
other things^ entering in (Mark iv. 19)], choke the word, and he becometh 
unfruitful" or, as St. Luke gives it, "they bring no fruit to perfection"^ 

* See Bernard (De Offic. Epist., c. 4, § 14, 15), for an interesting discussion, 
whether the faith of those comprehended under this second head was, so long as it 
lasted, real or not, — in fact, on the question whether it he possible to fall from 
grace given. 

t Columella : Angentem herbam. The image of an evil growth strangling a 
nobler, is permanently -embodied in our language in the name cockle, given to a 
weed well known in our fields — derived from the Anglo-Saxon, ceocan, to choke. 

X Catullus : Spinosas Er^cina serens in pectore curas. 

<j 'H irepl to. Aojtto imbu/xla. "Winer (Gramm. p. 177) would rather translate, 
The lusts about other things (cupiditates quae circa reliqua versantur). 

|| Ov Tf\€<r<popov<ri. The word occurs only here in the New Testament. It iff 
5 



66 THE SOWER. 

It is not here as in the first case, that the word of God is totally ineffec* 
tual ; nor yet as in the second case, that after a temporary obedience to 
the truth, there is an evident falling away from it, such as the withering 
of the stalk indicates : the profession of a spiritual life is retained, the 
name to live still remains — but the life and power of religion is by 
degrees eaten out and has departed. And to what disastrous influences 
are these sad effects attributed? To two things, the cares of this world, 
and its pleasures ; these are the thorns and briers that strangle the life 
of the soul.* It may seem strange at first sight, that these which appear 
so opposite to one another, should yet be linked together, and have the 
same evil consequences attributed to them: but the Lord does in fact 
here present to us this earthly life on its two sides, under its two aspects. 
There is first, its crushing oppressive side, the poor man's toil how to 
live at all, to keep hunger and nakedness from the door, the struggle for 
a daily subsistence, " the cares of this life"\ which if not met in faith, 
hinder the thriving of the spiritual word in the heart. But life has its 
flattering as well as its threatening side, its pleasures as well as its cares ; 
and as those who have heard and received the word of the kingdom with 
gladness, are still exposed to be crushed by the cares of life, so on the 
other hand, to be deceived by its flatteries and its allurements. In 
neither case has the world altogether lost its power, nor is the old man 
dead : for awhile he may seem dead, so long as the first joy on account 
of the treasure found endures ; but unless mortified in earnest, will 
presently revive in all his strength anew. Unless the soil of the heart 
be diligently watched, the thorns and briers, of which it seemed a 
thorough clearance had been made, will again grow up apace, and choke 

especially used of a woman bringing her child to the birth, or a tree its fruit to 
.maturity. 

* See the Shepherd of Hermas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 20, for the emblem of the moun- 
'tain covered with thorns and briers ; and so Jer. iv. 3 : " Break up your fallow 
ground, and sow not among thorns." It is evident that in the great symbolic lan- 
guage of the outward world, these have a peculiar fitness for the expression of 
influences hostile to the truth. They are themselves the consequences and evi-' 
dences of sin, of a curse which has passed on from man to the earth which he inha- 
bits (Gen. iii. 17), till that earth had none other but a thorn-crcvm to yield to its 
Lord. It is a sign of the deep fitness of this image that others have been led to 
select it, for the setting forth of the same truth. Thus the Pythagorean Lysis 
BaUr's ApolloniUS, p. 192), ttvkivoX kclI Xoiffiai \6xv-ai Trepl ras cppevas Kal rav Kapdlav 
ir€<pvKavTi tu>v fi^i Ka&apus to?s /J.a^-fifia(riv opyiaa&evrwv, irav rb a/xepov nal irpaov nal 
XoyiffTiKbv ras tyvxas iTri<ricid£ov(rcu, Kal KooXvovffai irpotyavuis jxev av^^rj/Jiev Kal irpo- 
Kvtyai rb votjtIkov. 

t Mepipva from nepis, that which draws the heart Afferent ways. See Hos. x 2: 
t( Their heart is divided," i. c. between God and the world ; such a heart consti- 
tutes the avrjp Stywxos. (Jam. i. 8.) See Passow, s. v. fiepifiva, who quotes Terence; 
Curae animum divorsfc trahunt. 



THE SOWER. 67 

the good seed.* While that which God promises is felt to be good, but 
also what the world promises is felt to be good also, and a good of the 
same kind, instead of a good merely and altogether subordinate to the 
other, there will be an attempt made to combine the service of the two, 
to serve God and mammon ; but the attempt will be in vain — they who 
make it will bring no fruit to perfection, will fail to bring forth those 
perfect fruits of the Spirit, which it was the purpose of the word of God 
to produce in them. The Saviour warns us against the danger which 
prov.es fatal to those in this third condition of heart and mind, when be 
says, " Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be over- 
charged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so 
that day come upon you unawares " (Luke xxi. 34) : and St. Paul when 
he writes, " They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and 
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and 
perdition." (1 Tim. vi. 9; see Matt. vi. 25— 34.)f 

But it is not all the seed which thus sooner or later perishes. The 
spiritual husbandman is to sow in hope, knowing that with the blessing 
of the Lord, he will not always sow in vain, that a part will prosper.^ 
w Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundred 

* Thus with a deep heart-knowledge Thauler (Dom. 22 post. Trin., Serm. 2) : 
Nostis ipsi, quod dum ager sive hortus a loliis ac zizaniis expurgatur, ut plurimum 
radices quaedam zizaniorum in terrae visceribus maneant, ita tamen ut minime de- 
prehendantur. Interim humus diligentur conseritur atque sarritur : ubi dum bona 
semina oriri deberent, simul zizania ex radicibus terrae fixis succrescunt, et fru- 
mentum aliasque herbas et semina bona destruent opprimentque. Sic ergo et in 
presenti loco radices dico, pravos quosque defectus et vitia in fundo latentia. et 
necdum mortificata : quag per confessionem et poenitentiam, ut ita dicam, sarrita 
quidem sunt, et per bona exercitia exarata : attamen vitiosarum radicum malae 
inclinationes seu propensiones, puta vel superbiae vel luxuriae, irae vel invidiae, seu 
odii bisque similium in ipso fundo relictae sunt, quse postea exoriuntur, et ubi di- 
vina, beata, virtuosa, laudabilis vita ex homine germinare, succrescere, oriri debe- 
ret, haec pessima noxiarum radicum germina prodeunt, fructusque illius ac religio- 
sam devotamque dispergunt, extinguunt, obruunt vitam. 

t Ovid's description (MetamorpL, 1. 5, v. 463-466,) of the things which hinder 
the returns of a harvest exactly include, with a few slight additions, those which 
our Lord has given ; though the order is a little different : 

Et modb sol nimius, nimius modb corripit imber ; 
Sideraque ventique nocent ; avidceque volucres 
Semina jacta legunt ; lolium tribulique fatigant 
Triticeas messes, et inexpugnabile gramen. 

} Thus the author of a sermon Augustini Opp., v. 6, p. 597, Bened. ed. : Non 
ergo nos, dilectissimi, aut timor spinarum, aut saxa petrarum, aut durissima via 
perterreat : dum tamen seminantes verbum Dei ad terram bonam tandem aliquandc 
pervenire possimus. Accipe verbum Dei, omnis ager, omnis homo, sive sterile 
sive foedus. Ego spargam, tu vide quomodo accipias : ego erogem, tu vidi quale? 
fructus reddas. 



68 THE SOWEE. 

fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold '." St. Luke says simply, " and 
bare fruit a hundred fold" leaving out the two lesser proportions of 
return which St. Mark gives ; who, however, reverses the order of the 
three, beginning from the smallest return, and ascending to the highest. 
The return of a hundred for one is not unheard of in the East, though 
always mentioned as something extraordinary ; thus it is said of Isaac, 
that he sowed, " and received in the same year a hundred fold, and the 
Lord blessed him" (Gen. xxvi. 12); and other examples of the same 
kind are not wanting.* 

We learn that "he that receiveth seed into the good ground, is he that 
heareth the ivord and miderstandeth it, which also beareth fruit, and 
bringeth forth some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty" or with, 
the important variation of St. Luke, "that on the good ground are they, 
who in an honest and good heart having heard the ivord keep it,\ and 
bring forth fruit ivith patience " — important, because in it comes dis- 
tinctly forward a difficulty, which equally existed in the parable as 
recorded by the other Evangelists, but did not come forward with an 
equal distinctness, and yet on the right solution of which a successful 
interpretation must altogether depend. What is this "honest and good 
heart . ? " how can any heart be called good, before the "Word and Spirit 
have made it so ? — and yet here the seed finds a good soil, does not 
make it. The same question recurs, when the Lord says, " He that is 
of God, heareth God's words" (John viii. 41); and again, ''Every one 
that is of the truth heareth my voice " (John xviii. 37). But who in 
this sinful world can be called " of the truth," for is it not the universal 
doctrine of the Bible that men become " of the truth " through hearing 
Christ's words, not that they hear his words because they are of the truth 
— that the heart is good, through receiving the word, not that it receives 
the word because it is good ? J This is certainly the scriptural doctrine, 
but at the same time those passages from St. John, as well as this present 

* Herodotus mentions that two hundred fold was a common return in the plain 
of Babylon, and sometimes three ; and Niebuhr (Beschrcib. v. Arab., p. 153), men- 
tions a species of maize that returns four hundred fold : "Wetstein (in loc.) haa 
collected many examples from antiquity of returns as great as, or far greater than, 
that mentioned in the text. 

•f KctTe'xoutn. So John viii. 51, T-npCiv t&j/ \6yov, to hold fast the word. St. 
Mark also has an instructive word, -Kapa^xovrai, they receive it into their inward 
life and soul. 

; Augustine (In Ev. Joh., Tract. 12), puts the difficulty and solves it in this 
manner : Quid est hoc 1 quorum enim erant bona opera 1 Nonne venisti ut justi- 
ficcs impios 1 — He replies : Initium operum bonorum confessio est operum malo- 
rwm. Facis veritatem, ct venis ad lucem. Quid est. facis veritatem 1 non te pal- 
pas, non tibi blandiris, non tibi adularis, non dicis, Justus sum, cum sis iuiquns; 
et incipis facere -veritatem. 



THE SOWER. 69 

parable, and much more also in the Scripture, bear witness to the fact 
that there are conditions of heart in which the truth finds readier 
entrance than in others. " Being of the truth," — " doing truth," — 
having the soil of " an Jwnest and good heart" — all signify the same 
thing. Inasmuch as they are anterior to hearing God's words — coming to 
the light — bringing forth fruit — they cannot signify a state of mind and 
heart in which the truth is positive and realized, but they indicate one 
in which there is a receptivity for the truth. No heart can be said to 
be absolutely a good soil, as none is good save G-od only. And yet the 
Scripture speaks often of good men ; even so comparatively it may be 
said of some hearts, that they are a soil fitter for receiving the seed of 
everlasting life than others. Thus the " son of peace " will alone receive 
the message of peace (Luke x. 6), while yet not any thing except the 
reception of that message will make him truly a son of peace. He was 
before indeed a latent son of peace, but it is the Gospel which first 
makes actual that which was hitherto only potential. So that the 
preaching of the Gospel may be likened to the scattering of sparks : 
where they find tinder, there they fasten, and kindle into a flame ; or to 
a lodestone thrust in among the world's rubbish, attracting to itself all 
particles of true metal, which yet but for this would never and could 
never have extricated themselves from the surrounding heap. 

Not otherwise among those to whom the word of Christ, as actually 
preached by himself, came, there were two divisions of men, and the same 
will always subsist in the world. There were first the false-hearted, who 
called evil good and good evil — who loved their darkness and hated the 
light that would make that darkness manifest, and refused to walk in 
that light of the Lord even when it shone round about them, drawing 
back further into their own darkness — self-excusers and self-justifiers, 
such as were for the most part the Scribes and the Pharisees, with 
whom Christ came in contact. But there were also others, sinners as 
well, often as regards actual transgression of positive law much greater 
sinners than those first, but who yet acknowledged their evil — had no 
wish to alter the everlasting relations between right and wrong — who, 
when the light appeared, did not refuse to be drawn to it, even though 
they knew that it would condemn their darkness — that it would require 
an entire remodelling of their lives and hearts : such were the Matthews 
and the Zacchaeuses, all who confessed their deeds justifying God. Not 
that I would prefer to instance these as examples of the good and honest 
heart except in so far as it is needful to guard against a Pelagian abuse 
of the phrase, and to show how the Lord's language here does not con- 
demn even great and grievous sinners to an incapacity for receiving the 
word of life. Nathanael would be a yet more perfect specimen of the 
class here alluded to — " the Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile " — 



70 THE SOWER. 

which was saying in other words, the man with the soil of an honest and 
good heart, fitted for receiving and nourishing the word of everlasting 
life, and bringing forth fruit with patience ; — one of a simple, truthful, 
and earnest nature ; who had been faithful to the light which he had, 
diligent in the performance of the duties which he knew, who had not 
been resisting God's preparation for imparting to him his last and best 
gift, even the knowledge of his Son. For we must keep ever in mind 
that the good soil comes as much from God, as the seed which is to find 
there its home. The law and the preaching of repentance, God's secret 
and preventing grace, run before the preaching of the word of the king- 
dom ; and thus when that word comes, it finds some with greater readiness 
for receiving it, as a word of eternal life, than others. 

When the different measures of prosperity are given, — that the seed 
brought forth in some a hundred-fold, in some sixty, and in some thirty, 
it seems difficult to determine whether these indicate different degrees 
of fidelity in those that receive the wo:yd, according to which they bring 
forth fruit unto God more or less abundantly, or rather different spheres 
of action more or less wide, which they are appointed to occupy, as to 
one servant were given five talents, to another two ; in which instance 
the diligence and fidelity appear to have been equal, and the meed of 
praise the same, since each gained in proportion to the talents committed 
to him, though these talents were many more in one case than in the 
other : — I should suppose, however, the former.* The words which St. 
Luke records (ver. 18), " Take lieed therefore hoiv ye hear, for whosoever 
hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be 
taken even that which he seemeth to have" (see also Mark iv. 23), are 
very important for the avoiding a misunderstanding of our parable, 
which else might easily have arisen. The disciples might have been in 
danger of supposing that these four conditions of heart, in which the 
word found its hearers, were permanent, immutable, and definitively 
fixed ; and therefore that in one heart the word must flourish, in another 
that it could never germinate at all, in others that it could only prosper 
for a little while. Now the warning, " Take heed hoiv ye hear" obviates 
the possibility of such a mistake, for it tells us that, according as the 
word is heard and received, will its success be — that while it is indeed 
true, that all which has gone before in a man's life will greatly influence 
the manner of his reception of that word, for every event will have 

* So Irenseus {Con. Har., 1. 5. c. 39, §2) must have understood it, and Cyprian 
(Ep. 69) : Eadem gratia spirituals quse sequaliter in baptismo a credentibus sumi- 
tur, in conversatione atque actu nostro postmodum vel minuitur vol angctur, ut in 
Evangelio Dominicum semen sequalitcr seminatur, sed pro varietate terrae aliud 
absumitur, aliud in multiformcm copiam vel tricesimi, vel sexagesimi, vel cente* 
limi numeri fructu exuberante cumulatur. 



THE SOWER. 71 

tended either to the improving or deteriorating the soil of his heart, and 
will therefore render it more or less probable that the seed of God's word 
will prosper there, yet it lies in him now to take heed how he hears, and 
through this taking heed to insure, with God's blessing, that it shall 
come to a successful issue. (Compare Jam. i. 21.) 

For while this is true, and the thought is a solemn one, that there is 
such a thing as laying waste the very soil in which the seed of eternal 
life should have taken root — that every act of sin, of unfaithfulness to 
the light within us, is, as it were, a treading of the ground into more 
hardness, so that the seed shall not sink in it, or a wasting of the soil, so 
that the seed shall find no nutriment there, or a fitting it to nourish 
thorns and briers more kindly than the good seed ; yet on the other 
hand, even for those who have brought themselves into these evil condi- 
tions, a recovery is still, through the grace of God, possible : — the hard 
soil may again become soft — the shallow soil may become rich and deep 
— and the soil beset with thorns open and clear.* For the heavenly 
seed in this differs from the earthly, that the latter as it finds its soil, so 
it must use it, for it cannot alter its nature. But the heavenly seed, if 
it be acted upon by the soil where it is cast, also reacts more mightily 
upon it, softening it where it is hard (Jer. xxiii. 29), deepening it where 
it is shallow, cutting up and extirpating the roots of evil where it is en- 
cumbered with these, and wherever it is allowed free course, transform- 
ing and ennobling each of these inferior soils, till it has become that 
which man's heart was at first, good ground, fit to afford nourishment to 
that Divine Word, that seed of eternal life.f 

* So Augustine (Serm. 73, c. 3) : Mutamini cum potestis ; dura aratro versate, 
de agro lapides projicite, de agro spinas evellite. Nolite habere durum cor, unde 
cit6 verbum Dei pereat. Nolite habere tenuem terram, ubi radix charitatis alta 
non sedeat. Nolite curis et cupiditatibus secularibus offocare bonum semen, quod 
vobis spargitur laboribus nostris. Etenim Dominus seminat ; sed nos operarii ejus 
sumus. Sed estote terra bona. Cf. Serm., 101, c. 3 ; and the author of a sermon, 
August. Opp., v. 6, p. 597, Bened. ed. : Si ver& te terram infcecundam aut spinosam 
rel siccam sentis, recurre ad Creatorem tuum. Hoc enim nunc agitur, ut innoveris, 
ut foecunderis, ut irrigeris ab illo qui posuit desertum in stagna aquarum, et ter- 
ram sine aqua in exitus aquarum. (Ps. cvi. 35-37.) 

f As our Saviour in this parable, so the Jewish doctors divide the hearers of 
the words of wisdom into four classes. The best they liken to a sponge that drinks 
in all that it receives, and again expresses it for others ; the worst to a strainer which 
allows all the good wine to pass through (see Heb. ii. 1, /dj irore irapa^pvufxev), and 
retains only whatever of dregs is worthless and of no account, or to a sieve that lets 
through the fine flour and retains only the bran. — Prudentius (Con. Symm., 1. 2, 
v. 1022) has put this parable well into verse. These are a few lines : 

Christus . . . dedit haec praecepta colonis : 
Semina cum sulcis committitis, arva cavete 
Dura lapillorum macie ne decidat illuc 



72 THE SOWER. 



Quod seritur: primb quoniam praefertile germen 
Luxuriat : succo mox deficiente, sub aestu 
Sideris igniferi sitiens torretur et areL 
Neve in spinosos incurrant semina vepres : 
Aspera nam segetem surgentem vincula texunt, 
Ac fragiles calamos nodis rubus arctat acutis. 
Et ne jacta via? spargantur in aggere grana : 
Haec avibus quia nuda patent, passimque vorantur, 
Immundisque jacent foeda ad ludibria corvis 
Talis nostrorum solertia centuplicatos 
Agrorum redigit fructua. 



n. 

THE TARES. 

Matthew xiii. 24-30, and 36-43. 

6 AuoTKEPs. parable put he forth unto them? 1 * Of this parable also, that 
" of the tares of the field" we have an authentic interpretation from the 
lips of our Lord himself. And this is well : for it is one, as all students 
of Church history are aware, on the interpretation of which very much 
has turned before now. Allusion to it occurs at every turn of the con- 
troversy which the Church had to maintain with the Donatists ; and tho 
whole exposition of it will need to be carried on with reference to dis- 
putes which, though seemingly gone by, yet are not in fact out of date, 
since in one shape or another they continually re-appear in the progress 
of the Church's development, and in every heart of man. To these dis- 
putes we shall presently arrive. — " Tlie kingdom of heaven is likened 
unto a man that sowed good seed in his field" From our Lord's own 
lips we learn, "He that sowed the good seed is tlie Son of man." This 
is the most frequent title by which our Lord designates himself, though 
it is never given him by any other, except in a single instance (Acts 
vii. 56), and then it would seem only to indicate that the glorified Sa- 
viour appeared bodily to the eyes of Stephen. He was often understood, 
in the early Church and among the Reformers, by this title to signify 
nothing more than his participation in the human nature ; while others 
have said that he assumed the name as the one by which the hoped-for 
Messiah was already commonly known among the people. But it is 

* Uape^TjKev. The word implies that he set it before them as one would set 
forth or propose a riddle, and is used because the parable has always something of 
the spiritual enigma, and as such is to call into exercise the spiritual sense of those 
to whom it is proposed, that they may discover its solution. (Mark iv. 34, eireKve, 
he solved them.) Rosenkranz (Gesch. d. Deuts. Poesie in MittekdL, p. 484 seq.) 
quotes from an old German poem a whole string of riddles proposed for solution 
under the form of parables. 



74 THE TARES. 

clear that, on the contrary, the name was a strange one to them, so that, 
hearing it, they asked, " Who is this Son of man ?" (John xii. 34.) The 
popular name for the Messiah at the time of our Lord's coming, was 
Son of David. (Matt. ix. 27; xii. 23 ; xv. 22; xx. 31, &c) No doubt 
he claimed the title (which was already given him in the Old Testament, 
Dan. viii 13), inasmuch as it was he who alone realized the idea of 
man,* the second Adam, who, unlike the first, should maintain h*is po- 
sition as the head and representative of the race, — the one true and per- 
fect flower which had ever unfolded itself out of the root and stalk of 
humanity. And using this title he witnessed against the twofold error 
concerning his person which has ever been seeking to manifest itself, — 
the Ebionite, to which the exclusive use of the title " Son of David" 
might have led, and the Gnostic, against which the appellation " Son of 
man" must have been a continual witness. 

At first there might seem a slight disagreement between this para- 
ble and the preceding, as though the same symbol were used in the two 
places to signify very different things ; for here it is explained, " The 
good seed are tlie children of the kingdom" there, " The seed is the word 
of God ;" yet in reality there is none, but only a progress from that pa- 
rable to this. In that the word of God is the instrument by which men 
are born anew and become children of the kingdom (Jam. i. 18 ; 1 Pet. 
i. 23) ; that word there is considered more absolutely in and by itself, 
while here it is considered after it has been received into the heart, in- 
corporated with the man — as that which has brought him into the posi- 
tion of a child of the kingdom, and which is now so vitally united with 
him, that the two cannot any more be considered asunder. (Compare 
Jer. xxxi. 27 ; Hos. ii. 23 ; Zech. x. 9.) 

The next words, " the field is tJie world" at once bring us into the 
heart of the controversy referred to already. Words few and slight, and 
seemingly of little import, a great battle has been fought over them, 
greater perhaps than over any single phrase in the Scripture, if we ex- 
cept the consecrating words at the Holy Eucharist. It is well known 
that, putting aside the merely personal question concerning the irregu- 
larity of certain ordinations, the grounds on which the Donatists justi- 
fied their separation from the Church Catholic were these : The idea of 
the Church, they said, is that of a perfectly holy body ; holiness is not 
merely one of its essential predicates, but the essential, to which all 
others must be subordinated, the exclusive note of- the Church. They 
did not deny that it was possible that hypocrites might lie concealed in 
its bosom, but where the evidently ungodly were suffered to remain in 
eommunion with it, not separated off by the exercise of discipline, then it 

* So Philo calls the Logos 6 aXtj^ivhs fofrpunros. 



THE TARES. 75 

forfeited the character of the true Church, and the faithful were to come 
out from it ; since remaining in its communion, by the very presence of 
the others they would themselves be denied. In support of this view, 
they maintained that such passages as Isa. lii. 1, and all other which 
spoke of the future freedom of the Church from evil, were meant to be 
applicable to it in its present condition, and consequently, where they 
were not applicable, there could not be the Church. Here, as on so 
many other points, the Church owes to Augustine, not the forming of 
her doctrine, for that she can owe to no man, but the bringing out into 
her clear consciousness that which hitherto she had implicitly possessed, 
yet had not worked out into a perfect clearness, even for herself. By him 
she replied, not in any way gainsaying the truth which the Donatists 
proclaimed, that holiness must be an essential predicate of the Church, 
but only refusing to accept their idea of that holiness, and showing how 
in the Church, which they had forsaken, this quality was to be found, 
and combined with other as essential qualities ; — catholicity, for instance, 
to which they could make no claim. 

The Church Catholic', he replied, despite all appearances to the con- 
trary, is a holy body, for they only are its members who are in true 
and living fellowship with Christ, therefore partakers of his sanctifying 
Spirit. All others, however they may have the outward notes of belong- 
ing to it, are in it, but not of it : they press upon Christ, as that throng- 
ing multitude ; they do not touch him, as that believing woman. (Luke 
viii. 45.) There are certain outward conditions, without which one can- 
not pertain to his Church, but with which one does not necessarily do so. 
And they who are thus in it but not of it, whether hypocrites lying hid, 
or open offenders, who from their numbers may not without greater evils 
ensuing be expelled,* do not defile the true members, so long as these 
share not in their spirit, nor communicate with their evil deeds. They 
are like the unclean animals in the same ark as tho ulean, goats in the 

* Augustine's view of the extent to which discipline should be enforced, and 
the questions of prudence which should determine its enforcing, may be judged 
from the following passage. Having referred to these parables, and to the separa- 
tion of the sheep and goats (Matt, xxv.), he proceeds {Ad Don. post. Coll., c. 5) : 
Quibus parabolis et figuris Ecclesia praenunciata est usque ad finem saeculi bonos 
et malos simul habitura, ita ut mali bonis obesse non possint, cum vel ignorantur, 
vel pro pace et tranquillitate Ecclesiee tolerantur, si eos prodi aut accusari non 
oportuerit, aut aliis bonis non potuerint demonstrari : ita sane ut neque emendatio. 
nis vigilantia quiescat, corripiendo, degradando, excommunicando, ceterisque coer- 
citionibus licitis atque concessis, quae salva unitatis pace in Ecclesia quotidie fiunt, 
caritate servata, . . . ne forte aut indisciplinata patientia foveat iniquitatem, aut 
impatiens disciplina dissipet unitatem. This, among his anti-Donatist treatises is 
the best for giving a notion of that part of the controversy on which this parable 
specially bears. 



76 THE TARES. 

same pastures with the sheep, chaff on the same barn-floor as the grain, 
tares growing in the same field with the wheat, endured for a while, but 
in the end to be separated off, the evil from the good. 

The Donatists wished to make the Church in its visible form and 
historic manifestation, identical and co-extensive with the true Church 
which the Lord knoweth and not man. Augustine also affirmed the 
identity of the Church now existing with the final and glorious Church : 
but he denied that they were co-extensive. For now the Church is 
clogged with certain accretions which shall hereafter be shown not to 
belong, and never to have belonged, to it : he affirmed — not, as his op- 
ponents affirmed of him, two Churches, but two conditions of one and the 
same Church ; the present, in which evil is endured in it, — the future, 
in which it shall be free from all evil ; — not two bodies of Christ, but 
one body, in which now are wicked men, but only as evil humors in 
the natural body, which in the day of perfect health will be expelled and 
rejected altogether, as never having more than accidentally belonged to 
it ; and he laid especial stress upon this fact, that the Lord himself had 
not contemplated his Church in its present state as perfectly free from 
evil.* In proof he appealed to this parable and that of the Draw-net, — 
that as tares are mingled with wheat, and the bad fish with the good, so 
the wicked with the righteous, and should remain so mingled to the end 
of the present age ;f and this not merely as an historic fact, but that 
all attempts to have it otherwise are here expressly forbidden. The 

* Augustine (Serm. 351, c. 4) : Multi enim corriguntur ut Petrus, multi toleran- 
tur ut Judas, multi nesciuntur donee adveniat Dominus, qui illuminet abscondita 
tenebrarum, et manifestet consilia cordium. And in another place : Homo sum et 
inter homines vivo, nee mihi arrogare audeo meliorem domum meam quam area 
INoah. He often rebukes the Donatists for their low Pharisaical views concerning 
whai, the separation from sinners meant. Thus (Serm. 88, c. 20) : Displicuit tibi 
quod quisque peccavit, non tetigisti immundum. Redarguisti, corripuisti, monu- 
isti, adhibuisti etiam, si res exegit, congruam et quae unitatem non violat discipli- 
nam, existi inde-: — see much more that is excellent. In another place he asks, Did 
the prophet of old, who said, " Go ye out of the midst of her," (Isai. lii. 11,) him- 
self separate from the Jewish church 1 — Continendo se a consensu non tetigit im- 
mundum : objurgando autem exiit liber in conspectu Dei : cui neque sua Deus 
peccata imputat, quia non fecit, neque aliena, quia non approbavit, neque negli- 
gentiam, quia non tacuit, neque superbiam, quia in unitate permansit. See also 
Ad Don. Post. Coll., c. 20. And once more : Cecidit Angelus ; numquid inquina- 
vit coelum 1 Cecidit Adam ; numquid inquinavit Paradisum 1 Cecidit unus de 
filiis Noe ; numquid inquinavit Justi domum 1 Cecidit Judas ; numquid inqui- 
navit apostolorum choros 1 — This extract is from one of the sermons in the volume 
of Scrmones Inediti of Augustine lately published (they are indeed inedited still) at 
Paris. This Sermon is among the not very many, which bear the stamp of un- 
questionable genuineness upon them. 

t Augustine : Alia est agri conditio, alia quies horrei. 



THE TARES. 77 

Donatists then were in fact acting as the servants in the parable would 
have done, if, after the master's distinct prohibition, they had gone and 
sought forcibly to root out the tares. 

There will be occasion hereafter to note how the Donatists sought to 
escape the argument drawn from that other parable. They were put to 
hard shifts to reply to this, but made answer, — " By the Lord's own 
showing HhefieW is not the Church, but the world. The parable, 
therefore, does not bear on the dispute betwixt us and you in the least, 
that dispute being not whether ungodly men should be suffered in the 
world (that is plain enough), but whether they should be endured in the 
Church."* But it must be evident to every one who is not warped by a 
dogmatic interest,! that the parable is, as the Lord announces at its first 
utterance, concerning the kingdom of heaven, or the Church. It re- 
quired no special teaching to acquaint the disciples, that in the world 
there would ever be a mixture of good and bad, though they must have 
been so little prepared to expect the same in the Church, that :t was 
very needful to warn them beforehand, both that they might not be 
offended, and think the promises of God had failed, when the evil should 
appear ; and also that they might know how to behave themselves, when 
that mystery of iniquity, now foretold, should begin manifestly to work 
Nor need the term " world " here used perplex us in the least : it ivas 
the world, and therefore was rightly called so, till this seed was sown in 
it, but thenceforth was the world no longer. J^o narrower word would 
have sufficed for him, in whose prophetic eye the word of the Gospel 
was contemplated as going forth into all lands, and sown in every part 
of the great outfield of the nations. 

"But tvhile men slept, his enemy came and sowed\ tares among t/ie 



* See how Augustine answers this argument, Ad Don. post Coll., c. 8. As the 
Donatists professed to make much of Cyprian's authority, Augustine quotes often 
from him (as Con. Gaudent., 1. 2, c. 4) words which show that he understood the 
parable as one relating to the Church : Nam etsi videntur in Ecclesid esse zizania, 
non tamen impediri debet aut fides aut caritas nostra, ut quoniam zizania esse in 
Ecclesid cernimus, ipsi de Ecclesia recedamus. Nobis tantummodo laborandum 
est, ut frumentum esse possimus, ut cum coeperit frumentum Dominicis horreis 
condi, fructum pro opere nostro et labore capiamus. 

f Commentators who have interpreted the parable, ii respectively of that con- 
troversy one way or the other, acknowledge this. Thus Calvin : Quanquam autera 
Christus postea subjicit mundum esse agrum, dubium tamen non est, quin propria 
hoc nomen ad Ecclesiam aptare voluerit, de qua exorsus fuerat sermonem. Sed 
quoniam passim aratrum suum ducturus erat per omnes mundi plagas, ut sibi agros 
excoleret in toto mundo, ac spargeret vitae semen, per synecdochen ad mundum 
transtulit, quod parti tantum magis quadrabat. 

X In the Vulgate, s^erseminavit, as in the Rhemish, oversowed, according to 
the better reading, eVeV7re k pev, which Lachmann retains. 



78 THE TARES. 

wheat , and went his way." Our Lord did not invent here a form of 
malice without example, but alluded to one which, though elsewhere 
unnoted in Scripture, was familiar enough to his hearers — one so easy 
of execution, involving so little risk, and yet effecting so great and so 
lasting a mischief, that it is not strange, that where cowardice and ma- 
lice met, this should often have been the shape in which they displayed 
themselves. TVe meet traces of it in many directions. Thus in the 
Roman law the possibility of this form of injury is contemplated, and a 
modern writer illustrating Scripture from the manners and habits of 
the East, with which he had become familiar through a sojourn there, 
affirms the same to be now practised in India. " See," he says, " that 
lurking villain watching for the time when his neighbor shall plough his 
field : he carefully marks the period when the work has been ' finished, 
and goes in the night following, and casts in what the natives call pan- 
dinellu, i. e. pig-paddy : this being of rapid growth, springs up before 
the good seed, and scatters itself before the other can be reaped, so that 
the poor owner of the field will be for years before he can get rid of the 
troublesome weed. But there is another noisome plant which these 
wretches cast into the ground of those they hate, called perumyrirandi, 
which is-more destructive to vegetation than any other plant. Has a 
man purchased a field out of the hands of another, the offended person 
says, ' I will plant the perum-pirandi in his grounds.' "* 

Many have made the first words here significant, and suppose that 
they indicate the negligence and lack of watchfulness on the part of 
rulers in the Church, whereby ungodly men should creep in unawares, 
introducing errors in doctrine and in practice.! (Acts xx. 29, 30; 
Jude 4; 2 Pet. ii. 1, 2, 19.) But seeing it is thus indefinitely put, and 
the servants, who should have watched, if any should have done so, are 
first designated at a later stage of the history, and then without any thing 



* Roberts' Oriental Illustrations, p. 541. A friend who has occupied a judicial 
station in India confirms this account. "We are not without this form of malice 
nearer home. Thus in Ireland I have known an outgoing tenant, in spite at his 
ejection, to sow wild oats in the fields which he was leaving. These, like the plant 
mentioned above, ripening and seeding themselves before the crops in which they 
were mingled, it became next to impossible to get rid of them. 

f So Augustine (Quccst. ex MattL, qu. 9) : Cdm ncgligentius agerent propositi 
Ecclesia) ; and Chrysostom. H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in Matth.) : Mortem sig- 
nificat Apostolorum sive torporem prselatorum. But Grotius more rightly : 'Av&pv- 
7rous, hie indefinitum est, non universale : quasi dicas, cilm dormiretur : hoc autem 
nihil est aliud quam descriptio opportunitatis ;— and Cajetan's remark has value : 
Cum dormircnt homines, non dicit custodes, si enim dixisset custodes, intelligere- 
mus ncgligentiam custodum accusari, sed dicit homines, ut inculpabiles" intelliga- 
tnus, naturali somno ocupatos. Jerome's Dormiente patre-faviilias (Ad Lnicif.) is 
•nly explicablo as other than an error on this view. 



THE TARES. 79 

to mark a past omission on their part, it would seem that the men who 
slept are not such as should have done otherwise, hut the phrase is equi- 
valent to " at night," and means nothing further. (Job xxiii. 15.) This 
enemy seized his opportunity, when all eyes were closed in sleep, and 
wrought the secret mischief upon which he was intent, and having 
wrought it undetected, withdrew. 

" T/ie enemy that solved" the tares, we learn, • is the devil,"* so that 
we behold Satan here, not as he works beyond the limits of the Church, 
deceiving the world, but in his far deeper skill and malignity, as he at 
once mimicks and counterworks the work of Christ : in the words of 
Chrysostom, u after the prophets, the false prophets ; after the apostles, 
the false apostles ; after Christ, Antichrist."! 

We may further notice with what distinctness the doctrine concern- 
ing Satan and his agency, his active hostility to the blessedness of man, 
of which there is so little in the Old Testament, comes out in our Lord's 
teaching in the New. As the lights become brighter, the shadows 
become deeper ; but till the mightier power of good was revealed, we 
were in mercy not suffered to know how mighty was the power of evil : 
and even here it is in each case only to the innermost circle of the 
disciples, that the explanation concerning Satan is given. So it was not 
till the Son of man actually appeared on the stage of the world, that 
Satan came distinctly forward upon it also ; but the instant that Christ 
opens his ministry for the setting up of the kingdom of God, at the same 
instant Satan starts forward as the hinderer and adversary of it, the 
tempter of him who is the head and prince of this kingdom.^ And 
instead of hearing less of Satan, as the mystery of the kingdom of God 
proceeds to unfold itself, in the last book of Scripture, that which details 
the fortune of the Church till the end of time, we hear more of him, 
and he is brought in more evidently and openly working than in any 
other. 

It is very observable, too, that Satan is spoken of as his enemy, the 
enemy of the Son of man ; for here, as in so many other places, the 
great conflict is spoken of as rather between Satan and the Son of man, 
than between Satan and God. It was part of the great scheme of 



* Zizaniator, as therefore he has heen called ; see Du Cange, s. y. zizanium ; 
and by Tertullian {De Anima, c. 16), Avenarum superseminatorem, et frumentari® 
segetis nocturnum mterpolatorem. "When Ignatius exhorts the Ephesians (c. 10) 
that no one he found among them, rod Sia$6\ov fiordim, no doubt there is an allu- 
sion to this parable. 

t Cf. Tertulliax, De Prascr. Haret., 3. 31. 

4: Bengel (on Ephes. vi. 12) has observed this : Quo apertius quisque Scripturaa 
liber de ceconomia et gloria Christi agit, ed apertius rursum de regno contrario 
tenebrarum. 



80 THE TARES. 

redemption, that the victory over evil should be a moral triumph, not a 
triumph obtained by a mere putting forth of superior strength.* "We 
can see how important for this end it was, that man, who lost the battle, 
should also win it (1 Cor. xv. 21), and therefore as by and through man 
the kingdom of darkness was to be overthrown, so the enmity of the 
Serpent was specially directed against the seed of the woman, the Son 
of man. The title given him is " T/ie wicked one- ;" the article is em- 
phatic, and points him out as the absolutely evil, of whom the ground of 
his being is evil. For as God is light, and in him is no darkness at all 
(1 John i. 5 ; Jam. i. 17), so Satan is darkness, and in him is no light; 
there is no truth in him. Man is in a middle position ; he detains the 
truth in unrighteousness ; light and darkness in him are struggling ; 
but, whichever may predominate, the other is there, kept down indeed, 
but still with the possibility of manifesting itself. Herein lies the 
possibility of a redemption for man, that his will is only perverted ; but 
Satan's will is inverted, for he has said what it is never possible for a 
man to say, or at least fully to act upon, " Evil, be thou my good ;" 
and therefore, as far as we can see, a redemption and restoration are 
impossible for him. 

It makes much for the beauty of the parable, and is full of instruc- 
tion, that wheat and tares are not seeds of different kinds, but that the 
last is a degenerate or bastard wheat ;f so that, in the very emblems 



* In Augustine's memorable words : Diabolus non potentia Dei sed justitia 
superandus erat. 

f It is well known that the word QiQxvwv nowhere occurs except here, and iD 
the Greek and Latin Fathers who have drawn it from this parable. The Etymol. 
Mag. gives another derivation of the word besides that quoted by Schleusner, and 
a better, though even that will scarcely command assent : irapa. r6 <t?tos koI l£dj/u, 
that which grows side by side with the wheat. Tertullian always renders it by avena, 
which is incorrect ; neither is Augustine sufficiently exact when he says, Omnis 
immunditia in segete zizania dicitur ; nor again is it, as our translators would seem 
to- have understood it, the vicia, but the alpa, or lolium temulentum (in German, 
Tollkorn, in French, yvroie), having that addition to distinguish it from the lolium 
proper, with which it has nothing but the name in common, because of the vertigo 
which it causes, when mingled with and eaten in bread. This in the East, despite, 
its poisonous qualities, not uncommonly happens— it being so hard to separate it 
from the wheat. The assertion made above, that it is a degenerate wheat, seems, 
I think, perfectly made out. Lightfoot quotes these words, distinctly asserting 
it, from the Talmud. " ' "Wheat and zunin are not seeds of different kinds.' 
"Where the gloss is this, ' zunin is a kind of wheat which is changed in the earth, 
both as to its form and to its nature.' " And in a passage quoted by Buxtorf {Lex. 
Talm., p. 680), this is noted as part of the progressive deterioration of nature, 
which went hand in hand with man's wickedness ; ' ; they sowed wheat and the 
earth brought forth zunin." MichaSlis indeed (Mos. Recht, v. 4, p. 322) says that 
Inese Rabbis, who probably never saw a corn-field in their lives, are not to be lis- 



THE TAKES. 81 

which the Lord uses, the Manichaean error is guarded against, which, 
starting from the (falsely assumed) fact, that wheat and tares are 
different in kind, proceeds to argue, that as tares by no process of 
culture can become wheat, so neither can the children of the wicked one 
become children of the kingdom. Satan is no Ahriman who can create 
children of darkness; he can only spoil children of light. Calvin* 
himself, whatever may have been the case with some who call themselves 
by his name, is careful to guard against that conclusion here, which 
would have been an abuse of parabolical language, a pressing of acci- 
dental circumstances too far,f even supposing that the tares and wheal 
had been altogether different in their kinds. But the fact in naturai 
history, noticed above, besides rescuing this passage from the possibility 
of being so abused, makes also this image peculiarly instructive and 
curiously adapted to the setting forth the origin of evil, that it is not a 



tened to in the matter : see also Ambrose Hexaem., 1. 3, c. 10. Yet on the other 
hand Pliny {H. N., 1. 18, c. 17), says of the lolium as of some other plants, inter 
frugum morbos potius cpiam inter ipsius terrse pestem numeraverim : and an old ! 
Scholiast upon the Georgics, on the words, Infelix lolium, writes thus : Triticum et 
hordeum in lolium mutantur. This quite explains the difficulty of knowing them; 
apart, and the danger, therefore, of plucking up one for the other : since only, 
when the grains begin to form, that of the lolium being d. i, sometimes nearh 
black, the difference clearly reveals itself. The tendency of *vheat, badly culti- 
vated, to degenerate is well known, and is noted by Columella (De Re Rust., 1. 2, 
c. 9) : Omne triticum solo uliginoso post tertiam sationem convertitur in siligineim 
The same happened with the Grape (see Gesenius on Isai. v. 2) : "It brought 
forth wild grapes" (labruscas). The tendency of the uncared-for tree to fall away 
from its first perfection, of the neglected seed to worsen, is h at another of the infinite 
and wonderful analogies which the world of nature supplies to the world of man. — 
By 'far the fuhest and most satisfying account of the £i(jxuiov is given by Schultetus 
{Crit. Sac. v. 6, p. 2026) : I had not seen it when the note above was written, but 
it arrives altogether at the same conclusions. 

* Observing how the Manichaeans have abused this passage he proceeds : Atqui. 
scimus, quidquid vitii est tarn in diabolo, quam in hominibus non aliud esse quam 
integral naturae corruptelam ; — and Augustine, on a passage exposed to like abuse 
(John viii. 44), " Ye are of your father the devil," guards against such, explaining' 
it, — Imitando non nascendo. Compare Irenseus, Con. Hcer., 1. 4, c. 41, § 2, and 
Grotius on Matt. vii. 18 ; and who has not heard in arguments concerning pre* 
destination, how goats can never become sheep, nor sheep goats % (Matt. xxv. 
32, 33.) 

t Chrysostom rather has right, when (De Pcenit., Horn. 8) he compares the 
Church to a better ark. Into the other ark, as the animals entered so they came 
out; a hawk entered in, and a hawk came forth, a wolf entered in, andawolf 
came forth. But into this a hawk has* entered in, and a dove comes out ; a wolf 
has entered in, and a sheep issues forth ; a serpent has entered in, and a lamb 
comes forth. 



82 THE TARES. 

generation, but a degeneration ; that as Augustine often expresses it, it 
has not an efficient, but only a deficient cause.* 

Having sown his tares, the enemy " went his way." The work did 
not evidently, and at first sight, appear to be his. How often, in the 
Church, the beginnings of evil have been scarcely discernible, — how often 
has that which bore the worst fruit in after-times, looked at first like a 
higher form of good. St. Paul, indeed, could see the mystery of iniquity, 
which, in the apostolic times, was already working — could detect the 
pu?ictum saliens out of which it would unfold itself ; but to most, evil 
would* not appear as evil till it had grown to more ungodliness: just as 
the tares did not, to the servants, appear to be such till " the blade ivas 
sprung up and brought forth fruit" All who have written on the 
subject, have noted the great similarity that, as might be expected, 
exsits between the wheat and this lolium or tare, while yet in the blade,f 
so that they are only distinguishable when the ear is formed ; thus ful- 
filling literally the Lord's words, " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
Augustine, noting how it was only when the blade began to ripen and 
bring forth fruit, that the tares began also to appear in their true cha- 
racter, most truly remarks, that it is only the opposition of good which 
makes evil to appear. " None," he says, " appear evil in the Church, 
except to him who is good ;" and again, " When one shall have begun 
to be a spiritual ir'an, judging all things, then errors begin to appear to 
him ;"J and in another place he makes the following observations, drawn 
from the depths of his Christian experience : " It is a great labor of the 
good, to bear the contrary manners of the wicked ; by which he who is 
not offended has profited little, for the righteous, in proportion as he 
recedes from his own " wickedness, is grieved by that of others."§ As 
:there must be light, with which to contrast the darkness, height where- 
-with to measure depth, so there must be holiness to be grieved at 
unholiness : and this is true, not only in the collective Church, but in 
each individual member of it, that as the new man is formed in him, the 



* De Civ. Dei. 1. 12, c. 7.- 

f The testimony of Jerome, himself resident in Palestine, may here he adduced: 
Inter triticum et zizania, quod nos appellamus lolium, quamdiu herba est, et non- 
dum culmus venit ad spicam, grandis similitudo est, et in discernendo aut nulla 
aut perdifficilis distantia. 

X Quezst. ex Matt., qu. 12 : where is to be found an admirable exposition of the 
whole parable. 

$ Tantum enim torquet justum iniquitas aliena, quantum recedit a sua. Cf. 
Enarr. in Ps. cxix. 4, and in Ps. cxl. : Nonduni sum totus instauratus ad imagi- 
nem fabricatoris mei : ccepi resculpi, et ex ea parte qua. reformor, disciplicet mihi 
quod deforme est. 



THE TARES. 83 

old man will become more and more displeasing, — will come more and 
more into distinct opposition. 

" So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir t 
didst not thou sow good seed in thy field ? from whence then hath it 
tares ?" Theophylaet interprets this of the angels, indignant that there 
should be heresies, scandals, and offences in the Church; for having 
explained, "while men slept" of the comparative negligence of the 
householder's servants, that is, of some Church rulers who ought better 
to have kept the borders of the Church from the incursions of the enemy. 
he now finds it inconvenient to understand the same servants as those so 
much offended by the mischief which had been done. But the angels 
are so clearly pointed out (ver. 30) as different from the servants, that 
this must be a mistake, and even granting that the words " while men 
slept" do indicate, as he supposes, the negligence of some who ought to 
have watched, still it is easy to say, some slept, and some wished to do 
away with the consequence of the others' negligence. These servants are 
not angels, but men, speaking out of the same spirit as animated those 
disciples, who would fain have commanded fire to come down from 
heaven* on the inhospitable Samaritan village. Those disciples, as the 
servants here, did well that they had a righteous zeal for their Master's 
honor ; but in each case the zeal needed to be tempered and restrained. 

The question which they ask, " Didst not tJiou soiv good seed in thy 
field?" is not put merely to give opportunity for the householder's reply: 
but expresses well the perplexity, the surprise, the inward questionings, 
which must often be felt, which in the first ages, before long custom had 
too much reconciled to the mournful spectacle, must have been felt very 
strongly by all who were zealous for God, at the woful and unexpected 
appearance which the visible Church presented. Where was the ".glori- 
ous Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing?" Well, 
indeed, might the faithful have questioned their own spirit, have poured 
out their hearts in prayer, of which the burden should have been nearly 
this, "Didst not tlwu soiv good seed in thy field? from wlience then hath 
it tares ? — didst thou not constitute thy Church to be a pure and holy 
communion ? — is not the doctrine such as should only produce fruits of 
righteousness ? whence then is it that even within the holy precincts 
themselves, there should be so many who themselves openly sin and 
cause others to sin ?"* 



* Menken: "This question, ' Whence then hath it tares?" is the result of our 
first study of Church history, and remains afterwards the motto of Church history, 
and the riddle which should be solved by help of a faithful history ; instead of 
which, many so-called Church historians [authors of Ancient Christianity, and the 
like], ignorant of the purpose and of the hidden glory of the Church, have their 



84 THE TARES. 

But in the householder's reply, the mischief is traced up to its 
origin : " An enemy hath done this." It is attributed not to the imper- 
fection, ignorance, weakness, which cling to every thing human, and 
which would prevent even a Divine idea from being more than very 
inadequately realized by men ; but to the distinct counterworking of the 
great spiritual enemy ; they are u spiritual wickednesses." No doubt in 
the further question, u Wilt thou tJien that ive go and gatlier tliem up ?" 
the temptation to use outward power for the suppression of error, a 
temptation which the Church itself has sometimes found it difficult to 
resist, finds its voice and utterance.* But they were unfit to be trusted 
here. Their zeal was but an Elias zeal at the best. (Luke ix. 54.) 
They who thus speak have often no better than a Jehu's " zeal for the 
Lord." And therefore "he said, Nay." By this prohibition are doubt- 
less forbidden all such measures for the excision of heretics and other 
offenders, as shall leave them no possibility for after repentance or 
amendment; indeed the prohibition is so clear, so express, so plain, that 
whenever we meet in Church history with something that looks like the 
carrying into execution this proposal of the servants, we may suspect, as 
Bengel says, that it is not wheat making war on tares, but tares seeking 
to root out wheat. The reason of the prohibition is given ; u Lest while 
ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wJieat ivith them.'''' This 
might be, either by rooting up what were now tares, but hereafter should 
become wheat — children of the wicked one, who, by faith and repentance 
should become children of the kingdom ;f — or it might happen through 
the mistake of the servants, who, with the best intentions, should fail to 
distinguish between these and those, leaving the tares and uprooting the 
wheat. It is only the Lord himself, the Searcher of hearts, who with 
absolute certainty "knoweth them that are his." But the Bomish 
expositors, and those who, in earlier times, wrote in the interest of 
Borne, in these words, "lest ye root up the wheat with them" find a 
loophole whereby they may escape the prohibition itself. Thus Aquinas 
says, the prohibition is only binding, when there exists this danger of 

pleasure in the tares, and imagine themselves wonderfully wise and useful, when out 
of Church history, which ought to be the history of the Light and the Truth, tliey have 
made a shameful history of error and wickedness. They have no desire to edify, to 
further holiness or the knowledge of the truth ; but at the expense of the Church 
would gratify a proud and ignorant world." 

* Augustine (Qucest. ex Matth., qu. 12): Potest ei suboriri voluntas, ut tales 
homines de rebus humanis auferat, si aliquam temporis habeat facultatem : sed 
utrum facere debeat, justitiam Dei consulit, utrum hoc ei prascipiat vel perinittat, 
et hoc officium esse hominem velit. 

j* Jerome : Monemur, ne cit6 amputemus fratrem : quia fieri potest, ut ille. 
qui hodie noxio depravatus est dogmate, eras resipiscat, et defendere incipiat 
reritatem, 



THE TARES. 85 

plucking up the wheat together with the tares ;* and Maldonatus, that 
in each particular case the householder is to judge whether there be 
such danger or no. The Pope, he adds, is now, the representative of the 
householder, and to him the question is to be put, " Wilt thou that we 
go and gather up the tares V and he concludes his exposition with an 
exhortation to all Catholic princes, that they imitate the zeal of these 
servants, and rather, like them, need to have their eagerness restrained, 
than require to be urged on to the task of rooting out heresies and 
heretics. 

The householder proceeds to declare — not that the tares shall never 
be plucked up, but that this is not the time, and they not the doers. 
u Let both grow together until the harvest? In these words the true 
doctrine concerning Antichrist, not indeed the personal Antichrist, but 
the antichristian power, is implicitly declared. We learn that evil is 
not, as so many dream, gradually to wane and to disappear before good, 
the world before the Church, but is ever to develope itself more fully, 
even as on the other side, good is to unfold itself more and more mightily 
also.- Thus it will go on, till at last they stand face to face, each in its 
highest manifestation, in the persons of Christ and of Antichrist ; on the 
one hand, an incarnate God, on the other, the man in whom the fulness 
of all Satanic power will dwell bodily. Both are to grow, evil and good, 
till they come to a head, till they are ripe, one for destruction, and the 
other for full salvation. And they are to grow together ; the visible 
Church is to have its intermixture of good and bad until the end of 
time, and by consequence that the fact of the bad being found mingled 
with the good will in no wise justify a separation from it, or an attempt 
to set up a little Church of our own.f Where men will attempt this, 
besides the guilt of transgressing a plain command, it is not difficult to 
see what fatal effects on their own spiritual life it must have, what dark- 
ness it must bring upon them, and into what a snare of pride it must 
cast them. For while even in the best of men there is the same inter- 
mixture of good and evil as there is outwardly in the Church, such con- 
duct will infallibly lead a man to the wilful shutting his eyes both to 
the evil which is in himself, and in the little schismatical body he will 

* Summa TheoL, 2* 2&, qu. 10: Cum metus iste non subest, . . . non dormiat 
se Veritas disciplinae. 

•j- Calvin's words are excellent : Est enim haec periculosa tentatio, nullam Eccle- 
iiam putare, ubi non appareat perfecta puritas. Nam quicunque hac occupatus 
fuerit, necesse tandem erit, ut, discessione ab omnibus aliis facta, solus sibi sanctus 
rideatur in mundo, aut peculiarem sectam cum paucis hypocritis instituat. Quid 
ergo causae habuit Paulus cur Ecclesiam Dei Corinthi agnosceret 1 nempe quia 
Evangelii doctrinam, baptismum, ccenam Domini, quibus symbolis censeri debet 
Ecclesia, apud eos cernebat. 



86 THE TARES. 

then call the Church, since only so the attempt will even seem to be suc- 
cessful. 

Thus Augustine often appeals to the fact that the Donatists had not 
succeeded, — that they themselves would not dare to assert that they had 
succeeded, — in forming what should even externally appear a pure com- 
munion : and since by their own acknowledgment there might be, and 
probably were, hypocrites and concealed ungodly among themselves, this 
was enough to render all such passages as Isai. lii. 1, as inapplicable to 
them as the Catholic Church in its present condition. And yet on the 
strength of this their assumed purity, they displayed a spirit of the most 
intolerable pride and presumptuous uncharitableness towards the Church 
from which they had separated. And the same sins cle&ve more or less 
to all schismatical bodies, which, under plea of a purer communion, have 
divided from the Church Catholic :* — the smallest of these, from its very 
smallness persuading itself that it is the most select and purest, being 
generally the most guilty in this matter. Not that there is not some- 
thing in every man which inclines him to the error ; every young Chris- 
tian in the time of his first zeal is tempted to be somewhat of a Donatist 
in spirit. Nay, it would argue little love or holy earnestness in him, if 
he had not this longing to see the Church of his Saviour a glorious 
Church without spot or wrinkle. But he must learn that the desire, 
righteous and holy as in itself it is, yet is not to find its fulfilment in 
this present evil time; that on the contrary, the suffering from false 
brethren is one of the pressures upon him, which is meant to wring out 
from him a more earnest prayer that the kingdom of God may appear.f 
He learns that all self-willed and impatient attempts, such as have been 
repeated again and again, to anticipate that perfect communion of saints 
are indeed works of the flesh, and that however well they may promise 
at the first, no blessing will rest upon them, nor will they for long even 
appear to be attended with success.^ 

* See Augustine {Coll. CartL, d. 3, c. 9) for an extraordinary instance of this 
pride on the part of the Donatist adversaries of the Church. 

t Fuller {Holy State, b. 5, c. 2) enumerates six reasons why in the kingdom ol 
grace wicked men should be inseparably mingled with godly :— " First, because 
hypocrites can never be severed but by him that can search the heart ; secondly, 
because if men should make the separation, weak Christians would be counted no 
Christians, and those who have a grain of graces under a load of imperfections, 
would be counted reprobates ; thirdly, because God's vessels of honor for all eter- 
nity, not as yet appearing, but wallowing in sin, would be made castaways ; fourth- 
ly, because God by the mixture of the wicked with the godly will try the watch- 
fulness and patience of his servants ; fifthly, because thereby he will bestow many 
favors on the wicked, to clear his justice and render them the more inexcusable ; 
lastly, because the mixture of the wicked grieving the godly, will make them the 
more heartily pray for the day of judgment." 

X Augustine {Enarr..in Ps. xcix. 1) asks: Quo se separaturus est Christiamis 



THE TAKES. 87 

There are some in modern times who, in fear lest arguments should 
be drawn from this parable to the prejudice of attempts to revive stricter 
discipline in the Church, have sought to escape the cogency of the argu- 
ments drawn from it,* observing that in our Lord's explanation no notice 
is taken of the proposal made by the servants (ver. 28), nor yet of the 
householder's reply to that proposal (ver. 29). They argue, therefore, 
that this parable is not instructive of what the conduct of the servants 
of a heavenly Lord ought to be, but merely prophetic of what generally 
will be the case in the Church- — that this offer of the servants is merely 
brought in to afford an opportunity for the master's reply, and that of 
that the latter is the only significant portion. But it is clear that when 
Christ asserts that it is his purpose to make a complete and solemn sepa- 
ration at the end, he implicitly forbids, not the exercise in the mean time 
of a godly discipline, not, where that has become necessary, absolute 
exclusion from Church-fellowship — but any attempts to anticipate the 
final irrevocable separation, of which he has reserved the execution to 
himself.f That shall not take place till the end of the present dispen- 
sation ;J — not till the time of the harvest^ will the householder com- 



ut non gemat inter falsos fratres *? Solitudines petat 1 sequuntur scandala. Sepa- 
raturus est se qui bene proficit, ut nullum omnino hominem patiatur 7 quid si et 
ipsum antequam proficeret nemo vellet pati 1 Si ergo quia proficit, nullum homi- 
nem vult pati, eo ipso quo non vult aliquem hominem pati, convincitur, quod non 
profecerit. An quia veloces pedes tibi videris habuisse ad transeundem, prseci- 
surus es pontem 1 — The whole passage is too long to quote, but deeply instructive 
concerning the vanity of every attempt to found a Church on a subjective instead 
of an objective basis, on the personal holiness of the members, instead of recog- 
nizing one there to be founded for us, where the pure word of God is preached, 
and the sacraments administered by those who are duly commissioned to these 
offices. How admirable again are his words in another place (Con. Cresc, 1. 3, c. 
35) : Fugio paleam ne hoc sim ; non aream, ne nihil sim ; and see also Serm. 164, 
c. 7, 8. 

* Steiger, in the Evang. Kirch. ZeiL, 1833, and an able writer in the Biitish 
Critic, No. 52, p. 385. 

■f Tertullian (Apol. c. 41) : Qui semel eeternum judicium destinavit post seculi 
finem, non precipitat discretionem quae est conditio judicii, ante seculi finem. 

^ The ffwreKeta rod alwvos, or awr. ruu alc&vow (so Heb. ix. 26), the moment of 
the passing over from this alky to the coming, the juncture of the two eras (see 
Job xxiv. 20. LXX. fi4xpi crvvreXelas (pwrhs Kal (tkStovs), the present, called alkv 
eVeo-Twy (Gal. i. 4), or 6 vvv aluv (Tit. ii. 12)=kJ<j>ios ovtos, with the future termed 
alkv epx6fi€i/os (Murk x. 30), al&ves itrepxo^voi (Ephes. ii. 7), alwv 6 fxeWcav (Heb. 
vi. 5)=olKovfi' : m] 77 fxeWova-a (Heb. ii. 5). The phrase is equivalent to the reA.?/ 
raiv alwvuv (] Cor. x.-ll), the extremities of the two eras, the end of the one and 
the commencement of the other. 

§ Bishop Horsley (Bibl. Crit., v. 3, p. 344,) distinguishes between the vintage 
and the harvest, which are the two images under which the consummation of the 
present age are so commonly represented. " The vintage is always an image of 



88 THE TARES. 

mand, — aiid then he will give the command not to these servants, but tc 
the reapers, — that the tares be gathered out from among the wheat 
Not till the end of the world will the Son of man send forth his servants 
— nor even then his earthly ministering servants,* but " his angels, and 
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend] and all which 
do iniquity" — in the words of Zephaniah (i. 3,) " the stumbling-blocks 
of the wicked." 

The lot of the tares is to be gathered into oundlesj and consumed 
with fire, as of the land bearing thorns and briers the end is to be burned. 
(Heb. vi. 8.) In David's words (2 Sam. xxiii. 6, 7), " The sons of Belial 
shall be all of them as thorns thrust away . . . and they shall be utterly 
burned with fire," or, as it is here expressed, the angels " shall cast tJiem 
into tlie furnace off re." Elsewhere (Mark ix. 43-48), the woe of hell is 
described under an image borrowed from the valley of the children of Hin- 



the season of judgment, but the harvest of the ingathering of the objects of God's 
final mercy. I am not aware that a single unexceptionable instance is to be found, 
in which the harvest is a type of judgment. In Rev. xiv. 15, 16, the sickle is thrust 
into the ripe harvest, and the earth is reaped, i. e. the elect are gathered from the 
four winds of heaven. The wheat of God is gathered into his barn. (Matt. xiii. 30.) 
After this reaping of the earth the sickle is applied to the clusters of the vine, and 
they are cast into the great winepress of the wrath of God. (Rev. xiv. 18-20.) 
This is judgment. In Joel iii. 13, the ripe harvest is the harvest of the vine, i. e. 
the grapes fit for gathering, as appears by the context. In Jer. li. 33, the act of 
threshing the corn upon the floor, not the harvest, is the image of judgment. It 
is true the burning of the tares in our Saviour's parable (Matt, xiii.), is a work of 
judgment, and of the time of harvest, previous to the binding of the sheaves ; but 
it is an accidental adjunct of the business, not the harvest itself."— It may be a 
question whether the manner in which he makes our parable fit into his scheme is 
quite satisfactory. 

* Augustine : Audes usurpare officium alienum, quod nee in messe erit tuum % 
And Cyprian (with reference to 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21) : JSTos operam demus et quantum 
possumus, laboremus, ut vas aureum et argenteum simus. Cseterum fictilia vasa 
confringere Domino soli concessum est, cui et virga ferrea data est. Jerome 
)Adv. Luctf.) : Nemo potest Christi palmam sibi assumere, nemo ante diem 
judicii de hominibus judicare. Si jam mundata est Ecclesia, quid Domino reser- 
vamus % 

f Ta (TKavdaXa. ~2,K&vZaXov (in its older form cKav^aK^pov) is that part of a 
trap or snare on which the bait is placed, and which being touched by the animal, 
gives way, and causes the snare to draw suddenly tight ; then, generally, a snare. 
In the New Testament, it is transferred to spiritual things, and includes whatever, 
entangling as it were men's feet, might cause them to fall ; it is therefore = trp6f- 
Ko/iixa. On account of its derivation it is nearly allied to irayis and d-fipa, and we 
find it used together with them, Rom. xi. 9. 

] Augustine explains this something in the fashion of Dante's hell, in which the 
wicked of one kind are gathered into one place ; for on this gathering into bundles, 
he says : Hoc est, rapaces cum rapacibus, adulteros cum adulteris, homicidas cum 
homicidis, fures cum furibus, derisores cum derisoribus, similes cum similibus. 



THE TARES. 89 

nom, where carcasses were cast out that from time to time were consumed 
with fire ; here from that most fearful of all forms of punishment, one not 
indeed in use among the Jews, for we must look at David's act (2 Sam. 
xii. 31) as an excess of severity, but one with which they were not unac- 
quainted, that is, death by fire. (G-en. xxxviii. 24.) It was in use among 
the Chaldeans ( Jer. xxix. 22 ; Dan. iii. 6), and in the Jewish tradition, 
which is probably of great antiquity, Nimrod cast Abraham into a fur- 
nace of fire, for refusing to worship his false gods, and in modern times 
Chardin makes mention of furnaces with a like object in Persia.* That 
dreadful punishment by fire supplies the image here, and doing so, 
makes exceedingly improbable the explanation which some have given of 
the gnashing, which they rather understand as a chattering, of the teeth, 
— that it is the expression of the pain arising from excessive cold,f so 
that they imagine a kind of Dantean hell, with alternations of cold and 
heat, alike unendurable. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth are 
evidently no more than expressions of rage and impatience (Acts vii. 
54), under the sense of intolerable pain and unutterable loss. 

But after it has been thus done with the wicked, u then shall the 
righteous shine forth\ as the sun in tlie kingdom of tlieir Father." As 

* Voy. en Perse, Langle's ed., v. 6, p. 118. 

t See Suicer, s. v. $pvy/j.6s, which some make =Tpi<riJ.6s 686uto»v, but it is sim- 
pler to say with Bernard : Fletus ex dolore, stridor dentium ex furore ; for in Cy- 
prian's words {Ad Demet.) : Erit tunc sine fructu poenitentia? dolor, poena? inanis 
ploratio, et inefficax deprecatio. See Ambrose, Exp. in Luc, 1. 7, c. 205, 206, and 
Gerhard, Loc. TheolL, 1. 31, c. 6, $ 46. 

X 'EK\dix\povarii/, in which full force is to be given to the preposition. Schleusner 
indeed says, — Parum differt a simplici hdfjnrw, — but Passow very differently, — Her- 
vorstrahlen, sich plotzlich in aller Herrlichkeit hervorthun. There are two beau- 
tiful similitudes in the Shepherd of Hennas (1. 3, sim. 3 and 4), engaged in setting 
forth the same truth, though under a different image. The Seer is shown in the 
first a number of trees, all which, while it is winter, are alike without their leaves, 
and seeming therefore to him all alike dead ; and he is told that as the dry and the 
green trees are not distinguishable from one another in the winter, while all alike 
are leafless and bare, so neither in the present age are the just from sinners. In 
the second, he is again showi: the trees, but now some of them are putting forth 
leaves, while others are still remaining bare. Thus shall it be in the future age, 
which for the just shall be a summer, and they shall be declared openly, while 
their hidden life shall then manifest itself; but for the sinners it shall still be win- 
ter, and they, remaining without leaf or fruit, shall as dry wood be cut down for 
the burning. The resemblance between these visions and singularly beautiful pas- 
sages in Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. xxxvi. 2, and in Ps. cxlviii. 13), where exactly 
the same image is used, is very remarkable ; and again he says of the Christian as 
he is now {hi Ep. Joh. Trad. 5), Gloria ejus occulta est ; ciim venerit Dominus, 
tunc apparebit gloria. Viget enim, sed adhuc in hyeme ; viget radix, sed quasi 
aridi sunt rami. Intus est medulla qua? viget, intus sunt folia arborum, intus fruc- 
tus : sed sestatem expectant. Compare -Minucius Felix (p. 329, ed. Ouzel.) : Ita 



90 THE TARES. 

fire was the element of the dark and cruel kingdom of hell, so is light 
of the pure heavenly kingdom.* TJien, when the dark hindering ele 
ment is removed, shall this element of light which was before struggling 
with and obstructed by it, come forth in its full brightness. (See CoL 
iii. 3; Rom. viii. 18; Prov. xxv. 4, 5.) A glory shall be revealed in 
the saints : it shall not merely be brought to them, and added from with- 
out ; but rather a glory which they before had, but which did not before 
evidently appear, shall burst forth and show itself openly, as did the 
Lord's hidden glory once in the days of his flesh, at the moment of his 
Transfiguration. That shall be the day of the manifestation of the sons 
of God ; they shall shine forth as the sun when the clouds are rolled 
away (Dan. xii. 3) ; they shall evidently appear and be acknowledged 
by all as the children of light, of that Grod who is " the Father of 
Lights."! (Jam. i. 17.) And then, but not till then, shall be accom- 
plished those glorious prophecies which are so often repeated in the Old 
Testament, — " Henceforth there shall no more come into thee the un- 
circumcised and the unclean." (Isai. Iii. 1.) " In that day there shall 
be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts." (Zech. 
xiv. 21.) "Thy people also shall be all righteous." (Isai. lx. 21.) 
Compare Isai. xxxv. 8; Joel iii. 17; Ezek. xxxvii. 21-27; Zeph. 
iii. 13. 

corpus in seculo ut arbores in hiberno, occultant virorem ariditate mentita. Quid 
festinas ut cruda adhuc hieme reviviscat et redeat 1 Expectandum nobis etiam 
corporis ver est. 

* It is exactly thus that in the Mahommedan Theology, the good angels are 
compact of light, and the evil ones of fire. 

t Calvin : Insignis consolatio, quod filii Dei qui nunc vel squalore obsiti jacent, 
vel latent nullo in pretio, vel etiam probris cooperti sunt, tunc quasi sereno coelo, 
et discussis omnibus nebulis, verb et ad liquidum semel conspicui fulgebunt : sum 
in sublime attollet Filius Dei, et omnem fuliginem absterget, qua nunc eorum 
fulgor obruitur. — It is the saying of a Jewish expositor of Ps. lxxii. « Quemadmo- 
dum Sol et Luna illuminant hoc seculum, ita futurum est ut justi illuminent secu- 
lum futurum. 



m. 

THE MUSTARD SEED. 

Matt. xiii. 31, 32 ; Mark iv. 30-52 ; Luke xiii. 18. 19. 

This parable, and the one that follows, would seem, at first sight, merely 
repetitions of the same truth ; but here, as in every other case, upon 
nearer inspection, essential differences reveal themselves. The other, 
of the Leaven, is concerning the kingdom of God, which " cometh not 
with observation ;" this is concerning that same kingdom as it displays 
itself openly, and cannot be hid : that declares the intensive, this the ex- 
tensive, development of the Gospel. That sets forth the power and 
action of the truth on the world brought in contact with it, — this the 
power of the truth to develope itself from within itself, — how it is as the 
tree shut up within the seed, which will unfold itself according to the 
inward law of its own being. Both have this in common, that they de- 
scribe the small and slight beginnings, the gradual progress, and the 
final marvellous increase of the Church, — how, to use another image, the 
stone cut out without hands, should become a great mountain, and fill 
the whole earth. (Dan. ii. 34, 35.) — Chrysostom* traces finely the con- 
nection between this parable and all that has gone before. In the para- 
ble of the Sower, the disciples had heard that three parts of the seed 
sown perished, and only a fourth part prospered ; again, they had heard 
in that of the Tares, and of the further hinderances which beset even 
this part that remained : lest then they should be tempted quite to lose 
heart and to despair, the Lord spake these two parables for their encou- 
ragement. My kingdom, he would say, will survive these losses, and 
surmount these hinderances, until, small as its first beginnings may ap* 

* So also Lyser, with more immediate reference to the question with which 
the parable is introduced in St. Mark (iv. 30) : Ciim ea sit Evangelii sors, ut tarn 
multa ejus fructum impediant,.et eidem Satanas tot modis insidietur, ut vix fruc- 
tus aliquis sperari possit, quid de illo dicemus 1 poterltne in rerum natura aliquid 
inveniri, quod ejus exilitatem excusare, illudque contemptu vindicare queat 1 



92 THE MUSTARD SEED. 

pear, it will, like a mighty tree, fill the earth with its branches, — like 
potent leaven, diffuse its influence through all the world. 

The comparison which he uses, likening the growth of his kingdom 
to that of a tree, was one with which many of his hearers may have been 
already familiar from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The growth 
of a worldly kingdom had been set forth under this image (Dan. iv. 
10-12 ; Ezek. xxxi. 3-9),* that also of the kingdom of God. (Ezek. x. 
vii. 22-24 ; Ps. lxxx. 8.)f But why, it may be asked, is a mustard treej 
here chosen as that with which the comparison shall be made 1 Many 
nobler plants, as the vine, or taller trees, as the cedar, might have been 
named. But this is chosen, not with reference to its ultimate greatness, 
but with reference to the proportion between the smallness of the seed 
and the greatness of the plant which unfolds itself from thence. For 
this is the point to which the Lord calls especial attention, — not its 
greatness in itself, but its greatness when compared with the seed from 
whence it springs ; since what he desired to set before his disciples was 
— not merely that his kingdom should be glorious, but that it should be 
glorious despite its weak and slight and despised beginnings. Nor, in- 
deed, was the mustard seed, though in appearance so trivial, altogether 
without its significance and acknowledged worth in antiquity. It ranked 
among the nobler Pythagorean symbols,^ it was esteemed to possess 
medicinal virtues against the bites of venomous creatures, and against 
poisons, and was used as a remedy in many diseases. || Nor can I, with 

* See Havernick, Comm. Ub. Daniel, p. 139. 

f In a striking- poem, found in the Appendix to Fell's Cyprian, the growth of 
the kingdom of God. under the figure of that of a tree, is beautifully set forth. 
The religious reverence with which all antiquity was accustomed to look upon 
trees (see Creuzer's Symbolik, third edit. v. 4, p. 621,) should not here be left out 
of mind. 

£ The most accurate inquiries of naturalists would seem to point out as the 
mustard-tree of this parable, not that which goes by this name in "Western Europe, 
but the Salvadora Persica, commonly called in Syria now, khardal. So Dr. Lind- 
ley in his Mora Judica; and see in the Athenceum of March 23, 1844, an interesting 
paper by Dr. Roj-le, read before the Asiatic Society. Captains Irby and Mangles, 
describing this khardal, say, " It has a pleasant, though a strongly aromatic taste, 
exactly resembling mustard, and if taken in any quantity, produces a similar irri- 
tability of the nose and eyes." There is on the other hand a learned discussion in 
the Gentleman's Magazine, June 1844, calling in question Dr. Royle's conclusions ; 
but not seriously shaking them. 

§ Plin., H. N., 1. 20, c. 87. 

|| Pliny (Ibid.) Plautus applies to it a harder epithet, smapis scaerata, because 
of its shaipness which draws tears from the eyes ; and Columella's line is often 
quoted : 

Seque lacessenti fletum factura sinapis. 
Yet this too may be a part of its fitness here. For neither is the Gospel all sweets, 
but may be compared to the mustard seed, iniddnvovo-av ucpeXl^as tV ^uxV 



THE MUSTARD SEED. 93 

a modern interpreter, find any thing so very ridiculous in the supposi- 
tion, that the Saviour chose this seed on account of further qualities 
which it possessed, that gave it a peculiar aptness to illustrate the truth 
which he had in hand. Its heat, its fiery vigor, the fact that only 
through being bruised it gives out its best virtues, and all this under so 
insignificant an appearance, and in so small a compass, may well have 
moved him to select this image under which to set forth the destinies of 
the word of the kingdom, — of the doctrine of a crucified Redeemer, 
which," though to the Greeks foolishness, and to the Jews a stumbling- 
block, should prove to them that believed " the power of God unto sal- 
vation."* 

Yet is it not Christ's doctrine merely, nor yet even the Church which 
he planted upon earth, that is signified by this grain of mustard seed- 
He is himself the grain of mustard seed.f For the kingdom of heaven, 
or the Church, was originally inclosed in him, and from him unfolded 
itself, having as much oneness of life with him as the tree with the seed 
in which it was originally shut up, and out of which it grew. He is at once 
the sower and the seed sown : for by a free act of his own will, he gave 



(Clem. Alex., Strom., 1. 5.) The comparison is carried out to a greater length in 
the homily of an uncertain author : Sicut sinapis granum ciim sumimus, vultu con- 
tristamur, fronte contrahimur, ad lacrimas permovemur, et ipsam salubritatem 
corporis nostri cum quodam fletu austeritatis accipimus, . . . ita ergo et cum fidei 
Christianse mandata percipimus, contristamur animo, affligimur corpore, ad lacri- 
mas permovemur, et ipsam salutem nostram cum quodam fletu ac moerore conse- 
quimur. Moreover, that its active energy, which in these quotations is noted, 
will make it as apt an emblem of the good as the ill ; and as such it was used, 
according to eastern tradition, by Alexander the Great ; for when Darius sent him 
a barrel full of sesame, to acquaint him with the number of his soldiers, he sent a 
bag full of mustard seed in return, to indicate the active, fiery, biting courage of 
his. (D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient., s. v. Escander.) 

* Thus the author of a Sermon which has been attributed to Augustine (Serm 
87, Appendix) and to Ambrose : Sicut enim granum sinapis prima fronte speciei 
suae est parvum, vile, despectum, non saporem praestans, non odorem circumferens, 
non indicans suavitatem : at ubi teri caeperit, statim odorem suum fundit, acrimo- 
niam exhibet, cibum flammei saporis exhalat, et tanto fervoris calore succenditur, 
ut mirum sit in tarn frivolis [granis] tantum ignem fuisse conclusum, . . . ita ergo 
et fides Christiana prima fronte videtur esse parva, vilis, et tenuis, non potentiam. 
suam ostendens, non superbiam praeferens, non gratiam subministrans. There is 
great fitness and beauty in the occasion upon which this sermon was preached, 
namely, the martyrdom of St. Laurentius, the manner of whose death is well 
known.— There is much also that is instructive, with somewhat merely fanciful, 
in the remarks which Ambrose {Exp. in, Due. 1. 7, c. 176-186) makes on this 
parable. 

t See a fragment of Irenaeus (p. 347, Bened. ed.,) who also notes how the mus- 
tard seed was selected for its fiery and austere qualities (rb irvppaKh nai abarnplv). 
So Tertullian, Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 30. 



94 THE MUSTARD SEED. 

himself to that death, whereby he became the author of life unto many ;* 
as he himself had said, " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 
(John xii. -24.) And the field in which he sowed this seed was the 
word; — "his field" or, as St. Luke expresses it (xiii. 19), u his garden;" 
for the world was made by him, and when he came unto it, "he came 
unto his own." 

This seed when cast into the ground is u the least of all seeds" — 
words which have often perplexed interpreters, as there are many seeds, 
as of poppy or rue, that are smaller ; yet difficulties of this kind are not 
worth making ; — it is sufficient to know that — Small as a grain of 
mustard-seed, was a proverbial expression among the Jewsf for some- 
thing exceedingly minute. (See Luke xvii. 6.) The Lord, in his popular 
teaching, adhered to the popular language. — To pass on then to the thing 
signified : "What, to the eye of flesh, could be less magnificent, what could 
have less of promise than the commencements of the kingdom of God in 
the person of the Son of man ? He grew up in a distant and despised 
province ; till his thirtieth year, did not emerge from the bosom of his 
family, — then taught for two or three years in the neighboring towns 
and villages, and occasionally at Jerusalem ; made a few converts, chiefly 
among the poor and unlearned ; and then falling into the hands of his 
enemies, without an attempt on his own part or his followers to release 
him, died the shameful death of the cross : such, and so slight, was the 
commencement of the universal kingdom of God. For in this the king- 
dom of God differs from the great schemes of this world ; — these last 
have a proud beginning, a shameful and a miserable end — towers of 
Babel, which at first threaten to be as high as heaven, but end in being 
a deserted and formless heap of slime and bricks; but the works of G-od, 
and most of all his great work, his Church, have a slight and unobserved 
beginning, with gradual increase and a glorious consummation. So is it 
with his kingdom in the world ; so is it with his kingdom in every single 
heart. The word of Christ falls there too, like a slight mustard seed, 
promising little, but issuing, if allowed to grow, in great and marvellous ■ 



* Early Christian art had a true insight into this. Didron (Iconographie Chri* 
tienne, p. 208), describes this as a frequent symbol : Le Christ dans un tombeau : 
de sa bouche sort un arbre, sur les branches duquel sont les ap&tres. 

■f So also in the Koran (Sur. 31) : Oh my son, verily every matter, whether 
good or bad, though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard seed, and be hidden 
in a rock, or in the heavens, or in the earth, God will bring the same to light 

j: Jerome (Comm. in Matth. in loc.) has a striking passage noting the difference 
In this respect, between the Gospel and every system of human philosophy : the 
last promising much and performing little, the other promising little and perform- 
ing much : Praedicatio Evangelii minima est omnibus disciplinis. Ad primam 



THE MTJSTAKD SEED. 95 

results. That which was the smallest of all seeds.* u when it is groimij 
it is the greatest among Jierbs, and becoineth a tree, so that the birds of 
f lve air come and lodge in t/ie branches thereof." It is well known that 
in hot countries, as in Judaea, the mustard-tree attains a size which it is 
never known to reach in our colder latitudes, sometimes so great as to 
allow a man to climb up into its branches, though this, indeed, is 
mentioned as a remarkable thing ;f or to ride on horseback under them, 
as a traveller in Chili mentions that he has done. And, on this passage, 
Maldonatus relates, that even in Spain he has himself seen great ovens 
heated with its branches ; he mentions as well that birds are exceedingly 
partial to the seed, so that when it is advancing to ripeness, he has often 
seen them lighting in very great numbers on its boughs, which, how- 
ever, were strong enough to sustain the weight without being broken. 
This fact of the fondness of birds for the seeds, and the manner in 
which, therefore, they congregated in the branches, was probably familiar 
to our Lord's hearers also. They, too, had beheld them lodging in the 
branches of the tree, whose seed thus served them for meat, so that there 
must have been a singular liveliness in the image which the parable pre- 
sented to their minds. 

Neither need we suppose this last circumstance introduced merely 
for the purpose of completing the picture, and presenting it in a more 
lively manner to the eye ; but rather in the birds nocking to the boughs 
of the mustard-tree when it had grown great, and there finding shelter 
and food (Ezek. xvii. 23, " under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing"), 
we are to recognize a prophecy of the refuge and defence that should be 
for all men in the Church : how that multitudes should thither make 

quippe doctrinam, fidem non habet veritatis, hominem Demn, Deum niortuuni, et 
scandalum cruris prasdicans. Confer hujuscemodi doctrinam dogmatibus Philo- 
sophorum, et libris eorum, splendori eloquentiae, et compositioni sermonum, et 
videbis quanto minor sit caeteris seminibus sementis Evangelii. Sed ilia cum 
creverit, nibil mordax, nibil vividum, nihil vitale demonstrat. sed totum flaccidum, 
marcidumque, et mollitum ebullit in olera et in berbas quae cito arescunt et cor- 
ruunt. Hwc autem prsedicatio quae parva videbatur in principio, cum vel in 
anima credentis, vel in toto mundo sata, fuerit, non exsurgit in olera, sed crescit 
in arborem. 

* Kuinoel's is an inaccurate remark, that here /juKpSrepoy is a comparative for a ' 
superlative, since it is the following vavruv which justifies and explains its use (see 
Mark iv. 32 ; John x. 29 ; Ephes. iii. 8) ; if I say that a man is better than all men, 
I say, indeed, that he is the best ; but I do not use a comparative for a superlative. 
So neither Virgil : Scelere ante alios immanior omnes ; nor the author of the old 
Latin epitaph, in which these words occur : Omnium feminarum sanctiori. This 
would not be worth observing, save as an example of the loose attribution to the 
New Testament, of ungrammatical forms, which is a most serious hindrance to all 
accurate interpretation. See "Winer's Grammatik, p. 221.) 

t Lightfoot, Hot. Heb. } in loc. 



96 THE MUSTARD SEED. 

their resort, finding their protection from worldly oppression, as well as 
the satisfaction for all the needs and wants of their souls ;* and proving 
true the words of the son of Sirach (xiv. 20, 26, 27), " Blessed is the 
man that doth meditate good things in Wisdom. . . . He shall set his 
children under her shelter, and shall lodge under her branches ; by her 
he shall be covered from heat, and in her glory shall he dwell." Theo- 
phylact concludes his exposition of the parable with this practical appli- 
cation : " And be thou also such a grain of mustard, — small, indeed, m 
appearance, for it becomes thee not to make a spectacle of thy virtue, 
but fervent, and zealous, and energic, and armed to reprove." 

* Augustine (Serm. 44, c. 2) : Crevit Ecclesia, crediderunt gentes, victi sunt 
terras principes sub nomine Christi, ut essent victores in orbe terrarum. Perse- 
quebantur ante Christianos pro idolis, persequuntur idola propter Christum. Omnes 
confugiunt ad auxilium Eeclesise, in omni pressura, in omni tribulatione sua. 
Crevit illud granum sinapis, veniunt volatilia coeli, superbi saeculi, et acquiescunt 
sub ramis ejus. 



IV. 

THE LEAVEN. 

Matthew xiii. 33 ; Luke xiii. 20, 21. 

This parable relates also to the marvellous increase of the kingdom of 
God ; but while the last set forth its outward visible manifestation, this 
declares its hidden mysterious working ; and not merely its development 
from within itself, but its influence on the world which it touches upon 
all sides. The mustard seed does not for some while attract observation, 
nor, till it has grown to a considerable size, do the birds of the air light, 
upon its branches ; but the active working of the leaven has been from, 
the very beginning, from the moment that it was hidden in the lump. 
It might indeed be said against this or any other scheme which should 
expound the leaven in a favorable sense, that it is most frequently used 
in the Scripture as the symbol of something evil. (1 Cor v. 7 ; Luke xii. 
1 ; Gal. v. 9.) This is undoubtedly true, and being this, it was forbidden,, 
in the offerings under the Law (Exod. xiii. 3 ; Lev. ii. 11; Amos iv. 5),, 
though not without an exception. (Lev. xxiii. 17.) The strict command 
to the people, that they should carefully put away every particle of 
leaven out of their houses, during the Passover week, rests on this view 
of it as evil : they were thus reminded that they needed to put away 
from their hearts all workings of malice and wickedness, if they would 
rightly keep the spiritual feast.* When leaven is thus used in an evil 

* See our Collect for the First Sunday after Easter.— The Jews termed the fig- 
rrientuni malum, that in man which lusteth against the spirit, and hinders him 
from doing the things that he would, the leaven in the lump, and the reason is 
given in the book Sohar : Prava concupiscentia vocatur fermentum, quia parum 
ejus cor pervadit, et in tantum exturgescit, ut findatur pectus. (See Schoettgen's 
Hot. Heb., v. 1, p. 597.) The Romans had the same dislike to the use of leaven in 
sacred things : Farinam fermento imbutam attingere flumini Diali fas non est. 
(Gell. x. 15, 19.) Plutarch (Qucest. Rom. 109), gives no doubt the true explana- 
tion: "The leaven itself is born from corruption, and corrupts the mass with 
which it is mingled." Thus it comes to pass that tiproi Ka&apo\ is used as=^^uoi. 
7 



98 THE LEAVEN. 

sense, its tendencies to make sour and to corrupt are those which coma 
most prominently forward. Yet, because such is its most frequent use 
in Scripture, there needs not, therefore, to interpret the parable, as 
Grurtler,* Teelman,f and also some little bands of modern separatistst 
(whose motive, of course, is obvious) have done, as though it were a 
prophecy of the heresies and corruptions, which should mingle with and 
adulterate the pure doctrine of the G-ospel, — as though it were, in fact, 
a prophecy of the workings of the future mystery of iniquity. These 
expositors make the Woman to be the apostate church, which, witn its 
ministers, they observe is often represented under this image. (Prov. 
ix. 13; Rev. xvii. 1; Zech. v. 7-11.) The last of -these passages Teelman 
asserts to be an exact parallel to the parable before us. If this inter- 
pretation were the true one, — if it could be said that at any time the 
whole Church was thus penetrated through and through with the leaven 
cf false doctrine, the gates of hell would, indeed, have prevailed against 
it ; and from whence it should ever have become unleavened again, it 
is difficult to understand. 

But the unquestionable fact, that leaven is, in Scripture, most com- 
monly the type of something false and corrupting, need not drive us into 
any such embarrassment. It was not, therefore, the less free to use it in a 
good sense. In those other passages, its puffing up, distributing, souring 
properties, were the prominent points of comparison ; in the present, its 
warmth,§ its penetrative energy, the power which a little of it has to 
lend its savor and its virtue to much wherewith it comes in contact. 
The great features of the figurative language of Scripture remain no 
doubt fixed and unalterable ; but it is not thus stereotyped in its minor 
details, so that one figure needs always to stand for one and the same 

So Jerome (Ep. 31) gives the reason why honey was forbidden in the Levitical 
offerings (Lev. ii. 11) ; Apud Deum enim nihil voluptuosum, nihil tantum suave 
placet ; nisi quod in se habet mordacis aliquid veritatis. These omissions had 
doubtless the same symbolical meaning, as the casting away of the gall among the 
Romans in the victims offered to the nuptial Juno.— It was the feeling of the un- 
suitableness of leaven in sacris which, in part, caused the Latin Church to contend 
so earnestly against the use of fermented bread in the Eucharist, calling those who 
used it, Fermentarii, though there was an historical interest also mingling in the 
question. (See Augusti, Handb. d. Christl. ArchdoL, v. 2, p. 662.) 

* Syst. Theol. Prophet, p. 590. 

•f Comm. in Lmc. 16, p. 59, seq. — Vitringa gives, with great impartiality, two 
entirely independent expositions of the Parable, taking first the leaven in a good, 
then in an evil sense, but decides absolutely for neither. 

% Brief Exposition of Matthew xiii., by J. N. Darby, 1845, p. 40. He makes in 
the same way the parable of the mustard seed to be a prophecy of the upgrowth 
of a proud world-hierarchy. 

<) Zu/*?7 from got, as fermentum (=fervimentum) from fervo : leaven, in French 
levain, from levare, to lift up. 



THE LEAVEN. 99 

thing. The devil is " a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour " 
(1 Pet. v. 8) ; yet this does not hinder the same title from being applied 
to Christ, " the lion of the tribe of Judah " (Rev. v. 5) ; only there the 
subtlety and fierceness of the animal formed the point of comparison, 
here the nobility and kingliness and conquering strength.* Cyrilf then 
certainly goes too far, and could scarcely have had this parable in his 
mind, when he says : " Leaven, in the inspired writings, is ahvays taken 
as the type of naughtiness and sin." Ignatius shows rather by his own 
application of the image, how it may be freely used, now in a good, now 
in a bad sense; for warning against Judaizing practices, he writes. 
" Lay aside the evil leaven which has grown old and maketh sour, and 
be transmuted into the new leaven, which is Christ Jesus." J Nor is it 
to be forgotten that if, on one side, the effects of leaven on meal present 
an analogy to something evil in the spiritual world, they do also on the 
other, to something good, as it is universally agreed that its effects 
on bread are to render it more tasteful, lighter, and more nourishing, 
and generally more wholesome. 

There is no need, then, to take the parable in cither than its obvious 
sense, that it is concerning the diffusion, and not the corruptions, of the 
Gospel ; by the leaven we are to understand the word of the kingdom, 
which "Word, in its highest sense, Christ himself was. As the mustard- 
seed, out of which a mighty tree was to grow, was the least of all seeds, 
so the leaven is also something apparently of slight account, and yet, at 
the same time, mighty in operation. Thus, too, of Christ it was said, 
" He hath no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is 
no beauty that we should desire him ;" but then presently again, " By 
his knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many, . . . and he 
shall divide the spoil with the strong" (Isai. liii. 2, 11, 12); and when 
he had communicated of his life and spirit to his apostles, they too, in 
their turn, poor and mean and unlearned as they were, became the salt 
of the earth, the leaven of the world. For, in Chrysostom's words, "that 
which is once leavened becomes leaven to the rest ; since as the spark 
when it takes hold of wood, makes that which is already kindled to 
transmit the flame, and so seizes still upon more, thus it is also with the 
preaching of the word."§ 

* See Augustine {Serm. 73, c. 2) : Quod enim tarn distat ad invicem, quam 

Christus et Diabolus 1 Tamen leo et Christus est appellatus, et Diabolus Ille 

leo, propter fortitudinem : ille leo, propter feritatem. Ille leo ad vincendura : illo 
leo, ad nocendum. Cf. Serm. 32, c. 6. 

f Horn. Paschal., 19. 

£ Ad Magnes., 10. Cf. Gregory Naz. {prat. 36, c. 90), who says that Christ 
by his Incarnation sanctified men, &o-irep (ipy yevSpevos t$ iravrl <pvpd/n.aTi, ical irpbs 
kaurbv kuwffus. 

$ In Matih., Horn. 46 ; see also Con. Ignaviam, Horn. 3. 2. So Cajetan: Christi 



100 THE LEAVEN. 

Is it only a part of the suitable machinery of the parable, that the 
act of kneading being proper to women, it should be here said, that it 
was " a woman " who took the leaven, and hid it in the three measures 
of meal? or may we look for something more in it than this? A 
comparison with Luke xv. 8, the woman who had lost and found her 
piece of money, may suggest that the Divine Wisdom, the Holy Spirit, 
which is the sanctifying power in humanity, (and it is of that sanctifying 
that the word is here,) may be meant. But jf it be asked, why as a 
woman ? to this it may be replied, that the organ of the Spirit's working 
is the Church, which evidently would be most fitly represented under 
this image. In and through the Church the Spirit's work proceeds: 
only as he dwells in the Church (Rev. xxii. 7), is it able to mingle a 
nobler element in the mass of humanity, to leaven the world. — So again, 
why should three measures of meal be mentioned ? It may perhaps be 
sufficiently answered, Because it was just so much as at one time would 
be commonly mixed. (Gren. xviii. 6; Judg. vi. 19; 1 Sam. i. 24.)* Yet 
it may be that we should attach a further significance to this number 
three. Some perceive in it allusion to the spread of the Grospel through 
the three parts then known of the world : others again, as Augustine, to the 
ultimate leavening of the whole human race, derived from the three sons 
of Noah ; which is nearly the same thing. And those who, like Jerome 
and Ambrose, find in it a pledge of the sanctification of spirit, soul, and 
body, are not upon a different track, if indeed, as has not been ill 
suggested, Shem, Japhet, and Ham, do indeed answer to these three 
elements, spirit, soul, and body, which together make up the man — the 
one or other element coming into predominance in the descendants 
severally of the three. 

But leaving this, we may observe how the leaven is at once different 
from, and yet acting upon, the lump ; for the woman took it from else- 
where to mingle it therein : and even such is the Grospel, a kingdom not 
of this world (John xviii. 36), not the unfolding of any powers which 
already existed in the world, — a kingdom not rising as those other 
kingdoms "out of the earth" (Dan. vii. 17), but a new power brought 
into the world from above, not a philosophy, but a Revelation. The 
Gospel of Christ was a new and quickening power cast in the midst of 
an old and dying world, a centre of life round which all the energies 
which survived, and all which itself should awaken, might form and 
gather ; — by the help of which the world might renew its youth.f-rAnd 

discipuli, prima regni caelorum membra, spiritu penetr&runt corda hominum, cru- 
daque ac acerba ad maturitatem ac saporcm cselestis vitse promoverunt. 

* In the two last places, the Septuagint has rpia jxirpa. 

| Augustine, in whose time the fading away of all the glory of the ancient 



THE LEAVEN. 101 

it is observable, that this leaven is said not merely to have been mingled 
with, but hidden in the mass, on which its influence was to be exerted. 
The true renovation, that which God effects, is ever thus from the inward 
to the outward ; it begins in the invisible spiritual world, though it ends 
not there ; for there beginning, it yet fails not to bring about, in good 
time, a mighty change also in the outward and visible world. This was 
wonderfully exemplified in the early history of Christianity. The 
leaven was effectually hidden. A remarkable evidence of this is the 
entire ignorance which heathen writers betray of all that was going 
forward a little below the surface of society, — the manner in which they 
overlooked the mighty change which was preparing, and this not merely 
at the first, when the mustard-tree might well escape notice, but, with 
slight exceptions, even up to the very moment when the triumph of 
Christianity was at hand. The leaven was hidden, yet, by degrees, it 
made itself felt, till at length the whole Roman world was, more or less, 
leavened by it. Nor must we forget, that the mere external conversion 
of that whole world gives us a very inadequate measure of the work 
which had to be done : besides this, there was the eradication of the 
innumerable heathen practices and customs and feelings which had 
enwoven and entwined their fibres round the very heart of society, a 
work which lagged very considerably behind the other, and which, in 
fact, was never thoroughly accomplished, till the whole structure of 
Roman society had gone to pieces, and the new Teutonic framework 
had been erected in its room. 

Rut while much has thus been effected, while the leavening of the 
mass has never ceased to go forward, yet the promise of the parable has 
hitherto been realized only in a very imperfect measure, and we cannot 
consider these words " till the ivhole is leavened" as less than a prophecy 
of a final complete triumph of Christianity ; that it will diffuse itself 
through all nations, and purify and ennoble all life. And we may also 
fairly see in these words a promise and an assurance that the word of 
life, received into any single heart, shall not there cease its effectual 
working till it has brought the whole man in obedience to it, sanctify- 

world "was daily becoming more apparent (mifndus tanta reruni labe contritus, lit 
etiam speciem seductionis amiserit), delighted to contemplate and to present the 
coming of Christ under this aspect. Thus Se^m. 81 : Parum tibi praestitit Deus, 
quia in senectute mundi misit tibi Christum, ut tunc te reficiat, quando omnia 
deficiunt 1 . . . Venit ci!»m omnia veterascerent, et novum te fecit. Res facta, res 
condita, res peritura jam vergebat in occasam. Necesse erat ut abundaret la- 
boribus : venit ille, et consolari te inter labores, et promittere tibi in sempiternum 
quietem. Noli adhserere velle seni mundo, et nolle juvenescere in Christo, qui 
tibi dicit ; Perit mundus, senescit mundus, deficit mundus, laborat anhelitu senec- 
tutis. Noli timere, renovabitur juventus tua sicut aquilae. 



102 THE LEAVEN. 

ing him wholly, so that he shall be altogether a new creation in Christ 
Jesus.* It shall claim every region of man's being as its own, and make 
itself felt in all. In fact, the parable does nothing less than set forth to 
us the mystery of regeneration, both in its first act, which can be but 
once, as the leaven is but once hidden; and also in the consequent 
renewal by the Holy Spirit, which, as the ulterior working of the leaven, 
is continual and progressive. This side of the truth is that exclusively 
brought out by Hammond, who thus paraphrases our Lord's words: 
" The Gospel hath such a secret invisible influence on the hearts of men, 
to change them and affect them, and all the actions that flow from them, 
that it is fitly resembled to leaven, so mixed thoroughly with the whole, 
that although it appeareth not in any part of it visibly, yet every part 
hath a tincture from it." "We may fitly conclude, in the words of St. 
Ambrose : " May the Holy Church, which is figured under the type of 
this woman in the Gospel, whose meal are we, hide the Lord Jesus in 
the innermost places of our hearts, till the warmth of the Divine wisdom 
penetrate into the most secret recesses of our souls."f 

* Corn, h Laplde quotes from an earlier commentator : DicfC autem, Donee fer- 
mentatem est totum, quia charitas in mente nostra recondita ed usque crescere 
debet ut totam mentem in sui perfectionem commutet, quod hie quidem inchoatur, 
in futuro vero perficitur. 

t Exp. in Lmc, 1. 7, c. 187. — Clemens of Alexandria (p. 693, Potter's ed.) gives 
an admirable exposition of the parable, and in very few words. The kingdom of 
heaven, he says, is likened to leaven, on i) Jcrxus rod A6yov crvurofios ovo~a teal Swaraj, 
ixdvra. rbv Karude^d/xej/op Ka\ ivrbs kavrov KTrjcrd/xevov avrrjv, iTriKSKpv/jLfxtyws re Kcd 
iupav&s irpibs iaxn^v eAjcet, koL to Tray abrov els 4v6Ti\ra avmyci. 



V. 

THE HID TREASURE. 

Matthew xiii. 4. 

The kingdom of G-od is not merely a general, it is also an individual, 
thing ; it is not merely a tree overshadowing the earth, leaven leavening 
the world, but each man must have it for himself, and make it his own 
by a distinct act of his own will. He cannot be a Christian without 
knowing it. He may come under the shadow of this great tree, and par- 
take of many blessings of its shelter. He may dwell in a Christendom 
which has been leavened, and so in a manner himself share in the univer- 
sal leavening. But more than this is needed, and more than this in every 
elect soul will find place. There will be a personal appropriation of the 
benefit, and we have the history of this in these two parables* which 
follow. They were spoken, not to the multitude, not to those u without," 
— but within the house, and to the more immediate disciples. These 
are addressed as having found the hid treasuref — the pearl of price 
and are now warned of the surpassing worth of these, and that, for their 
sakes, all things are to be joyfully renounced. The second parable does 
not merely r ipeat what the first has said, but repeats it with a difference. 
The two are each the complement of the other : so that under one or 
other, as finders either of the pearl or hid treasure, may be ranged all 



* Origen {Coram, m Matth.) observes that these would more fitly be called 
similitudes (dpoidxreis) than parables, which name, he says, is not given to them in 
the Scripture : yet see ver. 53. — For a series of these briefer parables as in use 
among the Je'ws, see Schoettgen's Hot. Heb., v. 1, pp. 83-85. 

■j" QrjaavpSs, i. e. (Twayay)] yjjn\[x.&ru>v KeKpv/j.fxem], as an old Lexicon explains it. 
Neither of the derivations greatly commend themselves ; not riby/xi and alpov=- 
aurum, the receptacle of gold, since the word avpov seems not so old as frrjo-aopSs 
itself, and that from ri^nfxi els avpiov, that put by for to-morrow, is artificial. — The 
Jurisconsult Paulus gives its legal definition, Thesaurus est tarn vetus depositio 
pecuniae, ut ejus non exstet memoria, et jam dominum non habeat. 



104 THE HID TREASURE. 

who become partakers of the rich treasures of the Gospel of Christ. Foi 
these, it may he, are persons who feel that there must be some absolute 
good for man, in the possession of which he shall be blessed, and find 
the satisfaction of all his longings, and who are, therefore, seeking every 
where and inquiring for this good. Such are likened to the merchant 
that has distinctly set before himself the purpose of seeking goodly 
pearls. These are the fewest in number, but at the same time, perhaps, 
the noblest converts to the truth. Again, there are others, who do not 
discover that there is an aim and a purpose for man's life, — that there 
is a truth for him at all, until the truth as it is in Jesus is revealed to 
them. Such are likened to the finder of the hid treasure, who stumbled 
upon it unawares, neither expecting nor looking for it. While the 
others knew that there was a good, and were looking for it, the discovery 
of the good itself is the first thing that reveals to these that there is 
such at all ; whose joy, therefore, as greater, — being the joy at the dis- 
covery of an unlooked-for treasure, — is expressed ; that of the other, not. 
Thus Hammond, bringing out this distinction, paraphrases the two pa- 
rables thus : " The Gospel being by some not looked after, is yet some- 
times met with by them, and becomes matter of infinite joy and desire to 
them : and so is likened fitly to a treasure, which a man finding casually 
in a field, hid again, or concealed it, and then, designing to get into his 
possession, accounts no price he can pay too dear for it. Others there 
are which have followed the study of wisdom, and thirsted after some 
instruction : and then the G-ospel of Christ comes as a rich prize doth 
to a merchant, who is in pursuit of rich merchandise, and meeting with 
a jewel for his turn, lays out all his estate upon it." 

The cases of Jew and Gentile will respectively exemplify the con- 
trast between the Pearl and the Hid Treasure ; though of course, in the 
case of the Jews, or the chiefest part of them, the example cannot be 
carried through, as they, though seeking the pearl, having a zeal for 
righteousness, yet, when the pearl of great price was offered to them, 
were not willing to sell all, — to renounce their peculiar privileges, their 
self-righteousness, and all else that they held dear, that they might buy 
that pearl. The Gentiles, on the contrary, at least the greater number 
of them, came upon the treasure unawares. Christ was found of them 
that sought him not, and the blessings of his Gospel revealed to them 
who before had not divined that there were such blessings for man.* 



* Grotius : Doctrina Evangelica quibusdam affulsit, neque de Deo, neque de 
vita emendanda, neque de spe vitae alterius quicquam cogitantibus, quales erant 
plerique in gentibus externis, quibus illud vaticinium Paulus aptat : Inventus sum 
non quaerentibus me. Erant et sapientiae studio-si inter Judseos et alibi, qui veri- 
tatis cogrioscendae desiderio quodam tangebantur, quive Proplietam aliquem aut 



THE HID TREASURE. 105 

Or again, we might instance Nathanael, as an example of the more re- 
ceptive nature, — of one who has the truth found for him ; or a still more 
striking example, — the Samaritan woman (John iv.), who was thinking 
of any thing more than of lighting on the hid treasure, when she came to 
draw water from the well. Yet in this character, there cannot be a total 
absence of seeking for the truth ; only it is a desire that has hitherto 
slumbered in the soul, and displays itself rather as a love of the truth 
when revealed, and at once a joyful and submissive acquiescence to it, 
than in any active previous quest. In both, there must be the same 
willingness to embrace it, when it is known, and to hold it fast at all 
costs and hazards. On the other hand, we have, perhaps, no such pic- 
ture of a noble nature, seeking for the pearl of price, and not resting 
till he had found it, as that which Augustine gives of himself in his Con- 
fessions ; though we also have many more, such as Justin Martyr's ac- 
count of himself, in his first dialogue with Trypho, when he tells how he 
had gone through the whole circle of Greek philosophy, seeking in vain 
for something' which would satisfy the longings of his soul, and never 
finding what he wanted, till he found it in the Gospel of Christ. 

The circumstance which supplies the groundwork of this first para- 
ble, namely, the finding of a concealed treasure, must have been of 
much more frequent occurrence in an insecure state of society, such as 
in almost all ages has been that of the East, than happily it can be with 
us. A writer on Oriental literature and customs, mentions that in the 
East, on account of the frequent changes of dynasties, and the revolu- 
tions which accompany them, many rich men divide their goods into 
three parts : one they employ in commerce, or for their necessary sup- 
port ; one they turn into jewels, which, should it prove needful to fly, 
could be easily carried with them ; a third part they bur} r . But while 
they trust no one with the place where the treasure is buried, so is the 
same, should they not return to the spot before their death, as good as 
lost to the living (compare Jer. xli. 8), until by chance, a lucky pea- 
sant, while he is digging his field, lights upon it. So that when we read 



ipsum etiam Messiam avidis animis expectabant. Priores respicit thesauri com- 
paratio, posteriores ista de unione. Bengel recognizes the same distinction : In- 
ventio thesauri non praesupponit rb quaerere, ut margaritae, qua? percontatione inve- 
niuntur. Alex. Knox, in his Remains (v. 1, p. 416, seq.) has very excellent remarks 
to the same effect. There is rather a confirmation of this in the forms which the 
two parables assume. In this the treasure is the prominent circumstance : — " The 
kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure." Now if the other had been cast in the 
same, mould, it would have been said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a pearl ; 
but not so, it is " like unto_a merchant-man ;" so that the person seeking is there 
at the centre of the spiritual picture, the thing found, here. This is scarcely 
*ccidental. 



106 THE HID TREASURE. 

in Eastern tales, how a man has found a buried treasure, and, in a mo* 
ment, risen from poverty to great riches, this is, in fact, an occurrence 
that not unfrequently happens, and is a natural consequence of the cus- 
toms of these people.* Modern books of travels continually bear wit- 
ness to the universal belief in the existence of such hid treasures ; so 
that the traveller often finds great difficulty in obtaining information 
about antiquities, and is sometimes seriously inconvenienced, or even 
endangered, in his researches among ancient ruins, by the jealousy of 
the neighboring inhabitants, who fear lest he is coming to carry away 
concealed hoards of wealth from among them, of which, by some means 
or other, he has got notice. Another evidence of this widespread belief 
is, that part of the skill of an Eastern magician should consist in being 
able to detect the places where these secreted treasures will successfully 
be looked for.f Often, too, a man abandoning the regular pursuits of 
industry, will devote himself to treasure-seeking, in the hope of growing, 
through some happy chance, rich of a sudden.J (See Job iii. 21 ; Prov. 
ii. 4.) The contrast, however, between the present parable and the fol- 
lowing, noticed already, renders it unlikely that in the present we are 
to assume the finder to have been in search of the treasure ; he rather 
stumbles upon it unawares,^ probably while he is engaged as a hireling 
in cultivating another man's field. 

Some, in the interpretation, draw a distinction between the field and 
the treasure ; making the first to be the Holy Scriptures ; the second, 
the hidden mystery of the knowledge of Christ contained in them,|| 
which when a man has partly perceived, — discovered, that is, and got a 
glimpse of the treasure, he is willing to renounce all meaner aims and 

* Richardson (Dissert, on the Languages, fyc, of Eastern Nations, p. 180) ; 
quoted by Rosenmuller (Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 197). Compare the 
strange story told by Tacitus, Annal., 1. 16, 1-3. 

f See Burder's Oriental Literature, v. 1, p. 275 ; and for evidence of the same 
in old time, Becker's Charikles, v. 1, p. 224. 

X The reader of Plato will remember his admirable words De Lcgg., 1. 11, 
p. 913. 

§ Such a treasure, in a field, would naturally be most often found quite unex- 
pectedly ; as Horace : si urnam argenti /ors qua mild monstret ; — it would often 
be turned up by the husbandman engaged in digging or ploughing^and thinking 
of no such thing. si sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria ! (Persius.) 

|| So Jerome (Comm. in Matth., in loc): Thesaurus iste, . . . sanctee Scripturse 
in quibus reposita est notitia Salvatoris; and Augustine (Quccst. Evang., 1.1, 
qu. 13) : Thcsaurum in agro absconditum, dixit duo Testamenta Legis in Ecclesia, 
quae quis cum ex parte intellectas attigerit, sentit illic magna latere, et vadit et 
rendit omnia sua, et emit agrum ilium, id est, contemtu temporalium comparat sibi 
otium, ut sit dives cognitione Dei. Alex. Knox has an ingenious view of the rela- 
tion between the treasure and the field which contains the treasure, in his Remains, 
r. 1, p. 418. 



THE HID TREASURE. 107 

objects ; that having leisure to search more and more into ttaose Scrip- 
tures, to make them his own, he may become rich in the knowledge of 
Christ which therein is contained. Yet to me the field rather repre- 
sents the outer visible Church, as contradistinguished from the inward 
spiritual, with which the treasure would then agree. As the man who 
before looked on the field with careless eyes, prized it but as another 
field, now sees in it a new worth, now determines that nothing shall 
separate him from it, — so he who recognizes the Church, not as a 
human institute, but a divine, — as a dispenser, not of earthly gifts, but 
of heavenly, — who has learned that God is in the midst of it, — sees now 
that it is something different from, and something more than, all earthly 
societies, with which hitherto he has confounded it : and henceforth it is 
precious in his sight, even to its outermost skirts, for the sake of its in- 
ward glory, which is now revealed to his eyes. And he sees, too, that 
blessedness is unalterably linked to communion with it ; as the man 
cannot have the treasure and leave the field, but both or neither must 
be his, so he cannot have Christ except in his Church ; none but the 
golden pipes of the sanctuary are used for the conveyance of the golden 
oil (Zech. iv. 12) ; he cannot have Christ in his heart, and, at the 
same time, separate his fortunes from those of Christ's struggling, suf- 
fering, warring Church : the treasure and the field go together ; both or 
neither must be his. 

But not to anticipate the progress of the parable, — this treasure 
" wlien a man hath found, he hideth ;" having laid it open in the disco- 
very, he covers it up again, while he goes and effects the purchase of 
the field. By these words it cannot, of course, be meant that he who 
has discovered the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in 
Christ Jesus, will desire to keep his knowledge to himself, since rather 
he will feel himself, as he never did before, a debtor to all men, to make 
all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery that is hid in Christ. 
He will go like Andrew to his brother man, and say to him, "We have 
found the Messias," and will seek to bring him to Jesus. If he hide the 
treasure, that will be, not lest another should find it, but lest he himself 
should lose it.* In the first moments that the truth is revealed to a soul, 
there may well be a tremulous fear lest the blessing found should, by 
some means'or other, escape from it again ; the anxiety that it may not 

* Maldonatus : Non ne alius inveniat, sed ne ipse perdat : Jerome ( Comm. in 
MaitL, in loc.) : Non quod hoc de invidia faciat, sed quod timore servantis et 
nolentis perdere, abscondit in corde suo quern pristinis praetulit facultatibus. H 
de Sto. Victore has a somewhat different explanation (De Area Mor., 1. 3, c. 6) 
Thesaurum inventum manifestat, qui acceptum donum Sapientiae in ostentation* 
portat. Thesaurum autem inventum abscondit, qui accepto dono Sapientiae no* 
foris in oculis hominum, sed intus coram Deo inde gloriari quaerit. 



108 THE HID TREASUKE. 

do so, and precautions for this end taken, would seem to be the truth 
signified by this re-concealment of the treasure found. — Having thus 
secured it for the moment, the finder, '•'"for joy thereof* goeth and selleth 
all that he hath, and buyeth that field ;" the joy is expressly mentioned 
here, being that in the strength of which the finder of the spiritual trea- 
sure is enabled to go and sell all that he hath ;f no compulsion, no 
command is necessary ; for joy thereof he cannot do otherwise ; all 
other things have now no glory, "by reason of the glory which ex- 
celled." 

Augustine excellently illustrates this part Of the parable. Describ- 
ing the crisis of his own conversion, and how easy he found it, through 
this joy, to give up all those pleasures of sin that he had long dreaded to 
be obliged to renounce, which had long held him fast bound in the chains 
of evil custom, and which if he renounced, it seemed to him as though 
life itself would not be to be endured, he exclaims : " How sweet did it 
at once become to me, to want the sweetness of those toys ! and what I 
feared to be parted from was now a joy to part with. For thou didst 
cast them forth from me, thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castedst 
them forth, and, for them, enteredst in thyself, sweeter than all pleasure.''^ 
The parting with those other delights, which had hitherto held him bound, 
was, in Augustine's case, the selling all that he had, that he might 
buy the field. Compare Phil. iii. 4-11, where St. Paul declares to us 
how he too sold all that he had, renounced - his trust in his own right- 
eousness, in His spiritual and fleshly privileges, that he might "win 
Christ and be found in him." In each of these illustrious instances, the 
man parted with the dearest thing that he had, so to make the treasure 
his own : though, in each case, how different was the thing parted with ! 
So, too, whenever any man renounces the thing that is closest to him, 
rather than that should be a hinderance to his embracing and making his 
own all the blessings of the G-ospel, — when the lover of money renounces 
his covetousness, — and the indolent man, his ease, — and the lover of 
pleasure, his pleasure, — and the wise man, his confidence in the wisdom 
of this world, then each is selling what he has that he may buy the field 
which contains the treasure. When the Lord says (Matt. x. 37-39), 
"He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me,"&c, 
he is, in fact, exhorting to this selling of all that we have ; see also Matt. 

* 'A7rb rrjs % a P" y avrov. But perhaps rather "for his joy" (curb rrjs x a P** s 

•f Bengel : Gaudium spirituale, stimulus abnegandi mundum. 

£ Confess., 1. 9, c. 1 : Quam suave mihi subito factum est carere suavitatibus 
Zragarum, et quas amittere metus fuerat, jam dimittere gaudium erat. Ejiciebaa 
enim eas a me^ vera tu et summa suavitas, ejiciebas et intrabas pro eis omni volup- 
tate dulcior. 



THE HID TREASURE. 109 

xvi. 24 ; and Mark ix. 43-48, where the same command is given. And 
yet, in the present case, it is not merely a command ; it is not to be con- 
sidered as an arbitrary condition, imposed from without, but rather a de- 
lightful constraint, acknowledged within : even as a man would willingly 
fling down pebbles and mosses, which hitherto he had been gathering, 
and with which he had filled his hands, if pearls and precious stones 
were offered to him ;* or as the dead leaves easily and as of themselves 
fall off from the tree, when propelled by the new blossoms and buds 
which are forcing their way from behind. 

But a difficulty has been sometimes found in the circumstance of the 
finder of the treasure going and buying the field,f keeping back, as it is 
evident that he did, from the owner, the knowledge of the fact which en- 
hanced its value so greatly, that either he would not have parted with it at 
all, or only at a much higher price. They argue that it is against the de- 
corum of the divine teaching and of the Divine Teacher, that an action, 
morally questionable at least, if not absolutely unrighteous, should be used 
even for the outward setting forth of a spiritual action whk)h is commend- 
ed and urged upon others as worthy of imitation ; that there is a certain 
approbation of the action conveyed, even in the very use of it for such 
ends ; in fact, they find the same difficulty here as in the parables of the 
Unjust Steward, snd the Unjust Judge. Olshausen.J so far from evad- 
ing the difficulty, or seeking to rescue the present parable from underlying 
the same difficulty, as undoubtedly cleaves to one of those, himself brings 
forward the likeness existing between the two, and affirms that, in both, 
prudence (Klugheit) with regard to divine things, is commended ; so that 
they are parables of the same class, and in this respect, at least, contain- 

* Augustine : Ecce petis a Deo, et dicis, Domine, da mihi. Quid tibi dabit qui 
aliunde manus tuas videt occupatas ? Ecce Dominus vult dare quae sua sunt, et 
non videt ubi ponat ; and again (J?i 1 Ep. Joh., Tract. 4) : Bono implendus es, 
funde malum. Puta quia melle te vult implere Deus. Si aceto plenus, es ubi mel 
pones 1 Fundendum est quod portabat vas. Mundandum est, etsi cum labore, 
cum tritura : ut fiat aptum cuidam rei. 

f It is curious, and is noticed by Vitringa (Erkldr. d. Par ah., p. 235), that we 
should have in ancient history, an account almost exactly answering to that which 
supplies the groundwork of the present parable. After Mardonius had been con- 
quered at Platasa, a report existed that he had left great treasures buried within 
the circuit where his tent had stood ; Polycrates, a Theban, buying the ground, 
sought long for the treasure, but not finding it, inquired at Delphi, and was told 
i; to turn every stone," which doing, he found it. Such the proverb collectors give 
as the origin of the proverb, iravra \ibov nivei. (See the Parcem. Grac, Oxf, 1836, 
p. 363.) 

^ In his Biblischer Commentar ; a most interesting and instructive work, to which 
my obligations are large and frequent : it has unhappily been left unfinished by 
his death. I know no work which would so favorably present the better German 
theology to the English reader, as would this. 



110 THE HID TREASURE. 

ing the same moral. But to the objection made above, it seems enough 
to say, that not every part of his conduct who found the treasure is pro- 
posed for imitation, or as affording a point of comparison,* but only his 
earnestness in securing the treasure found ; his fixed purpose to secure 
and make it his own, at all costs and all hazards, and (which, I suppose, 
is Olshausen's meaning) his prudence, without any affirmation that the 
actual manner in which that prudence was exercised, was praiseworthy 
or not.f 

* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lvii. 6) : Non undecunque datur similitudo a Scrip- 
turis, laudatur ipsa res, sed tantum inde similitudo trahitur. 

t In books of casuistry, where they treat of the question, how far and where a 
finder has a right to appropriate things found, this parable is frequently adduced, 
as by Aquinas (Summ. Theol., 1. 2, qu. 69, art. 5) : Circa res inventas est distin- 
guendum. Quaedam enim sunt, quae nunquam fuerint in bonis alicujus, sicut lapilli 
et gemmae quae inveniuntur in litore maris. Et talia occupanti conceduntur, et 
eadem ratio est de thesauris antiquo tempore sub terra occultatis, quorum non ex- 
tat aliquis possessor : nisi quod secundum leges civiles tenetur inventor dare medi- 
etatem domino agri si in alieno agro invenerit. Propter quod in parabola dicitur 
(Matth. xiii.), de inventore thesauri, quod emit agrum, quasi ut haberet jus possi- 
dendi totum thesaurum. — We read of Apollonius of Tyana (see his Life, 1. 2. c. 15) 
being called in to decide a quarrel between the buyer and seller of such a field, as 
to which of them a treasure found in it shall belong. He does not much help the 
law of the matter, for he adjudges it to whichever of the parties shall be found, on 
scrutiny, to have lived in Maae p*st the holiest life. 



VI. 

THE PEARL. 

Matthew xiii. 45, 46. 

Almost all which would have been to be said upon this parable, had ifc 
stood alone, has been anticipated in that which went immediately before. 
The relations in which the two stand to one another have been already 
noticed: — we have here not merely a finder, but also a seeker, of true 
wisdom — " Tlie kingdom of God is like unto a merchant-man* seeking 
goodly pearls?^ To find them has been the object of his labors: '-'the 
search is therefore determinate, discriminative, unremitting." He has set 
his purpose distinctly before him, and to that is bending all his energies ; 
he is one in fact, who has felt that man was not made in vain, that there 
must be a centre of peace for him, a good that will satisfy all the crav- 
ings of his soul, and who is determined not to rest till he has found that 
good. He does not perhaps yet know that it is but one, for at his start- 
ing he is seeking many goodly pearls, but rather perhaps imagines that 
it is to be made up and combined from many quarters : but this also will 
be revealed to him in due time.f 

It makes much for the beauty of the parable, and the fitness of the 
image used to set forth the surpassing value of the kingdom of God, that 
we keep in mind the esteem in which the pearl was held in antiquity,}; 

/ 

* The pearl-merchant was termed margaritarius, though this name was some- 
times also given to the diver. 

f Augustine (Serm. de Disc. Christ., v. 6, p. 583, Bened. ed.) assumes the one- 
tiess of that which here is found as furnishing another point of contrast beside those 
already detailed, between this parable and the last. There the kingdom of heaven 
is presented as manifold, even as a treasure would contain precious things of vari- 
ous kinds laid up in it : here it is presented in its unity — as much as to say, This 
which is so multifold, is also single and at heart but one. 

X Pliny : Principium culmenque omnium rerum pretii margaritas tenent : and 
the word which was rendered (Prov. iii. 15 ; xx. 15 ; xxxi. 10) by earlier translators 



112 THE PEARL. 

so that there is record of almost incredible sums having been given for 
single pearls, when perfect of their kind. There were many defects 
which materially diminished their value, as for instance, if they had a 
yellow or dusky tinge, or were not absolutely round or smooth. The 
skill and wariness which on this account the pearl-merchant must have 
needed lest he should have a meaner thing put upon him in lieu of the 
best, will not be without its answer in the spiritual world.* Origenf 
observes, that the fact of there being so many pearls of an inferior 
quality (cpavXoi) adds an emphasis to the epithet here used. The 
merchant is seeking "goodly" pearls, as he whom the merchant repre- 
sents, has set before himself, not mean and poor, but noble and worthy, 
aims, even in times anterior to that in which he finds the pearl of price. 
He is not one living for sensual objects. He has not made pleasure, or 
the acquisition of money, or the winning of the high places of the world, 
the end of his labors. But he has been, it may be, a seeker of wisdom, 
a philanthropist, a worshipper of the beautiful in nature or in art — who 
has hoped to find his soul's satisfaction in these. But this pearl of 
price, what is it, which at length he finds ? Many answers have been 
given, which yet, however they may seem to diverge from one another, 
grow out of one and the same root ; all ultimately resolve themselves 
into one ; J — the pearl is the kingdom of God within a man, — or God 
revealing himself in the soul, — or the knowledge of Christ,^ — or Christ 

of Scripture most commonly as rubies, is generally believed now to signify pearls ; 
though according to TViner {Real Wortcrb., s. v. Perlen) the question is still un- 
settled. 

* Augustine (Serm. 37, c. 3) : Discite lapides sestimare, negotiatores regni 
ccelorum. 

t Comm. in Matth. (in loc), where he has much curious learning about pearls. 
— The theory of their formation current in ancient times is detailed by him. The 
fish conceived the pearl from the dew of heaven, and according to the quality oi 
the dew, it was pure and round, or cloudy and deformed with specks. (See Plin. 
H. N., .1. 9, c. 35. Ammian. Marcell., 1. 23, c. 6, § 85.) The state of the atmo- 
sphere at the time of their conception, was then naturally supposed to exercise a 
great influence on their size and color, and even the time of the day. Thus Isidore 
Hisp. : Meliores . . . candidse margaritse quam quse flavescunt : illas enim aut ju- 
ventus, aut matutini roris conceptio reddit Candidas ; has senectus vel vespertinus 
aer reddit obscuras. See also Mr. Greswell's Exp. of the Par., v. ii. p. 220-222 ; 
and for all which could be got together about them, Bochart's Hierozoicon, pars 2, 
1. 5, c. 5-8. 

$ See Suicer's Thes., s. v. ixapyapirrjs. 

§ II. de Sto. Victore {Annot. in Matth.) : Bonze margaritse, lex et prophetee : 
una prctiosa, Salvatoris scicntia. So Origen on this place says, the law and pro- 
phets were as the lamp which was precious till the sun arose ; he has these 
instructive references, Matt. xvii. 5-8 ; 2 Cor. iii. 10. Schocttgen observes (Hor. 
Heb., v. 1, p. 132) : Judaei doctrinas ct lectiones pulchras ac notatu dignas vocarunt 
margaritas : — as in later Latin, margaritum was a name of endearment. Von 



THE PEARL. 113 

himself,* — these are all but different ways of expressing the same 
thing. 

But when the merchant had found this pearl of price, he " went and 
sold all that lie had, and bought it." What this selling of all means, 
has been already observed ; and to understand what the buying means, 
and what it does not mean, we may compare Isai. lv. 1 ; Matt. xxv. 9, 
10: Rev. iii. 18; and Prov. xxiii. 23, "Buy the truth, and sell it not;" 
obtain the truth at any price, and let no price tempt you to let it go. 
The contrast between the one pearl which the merchant finds and the 
many which he had been seeking, is here by no means to be overlooked ; 
the same contrast is marked elsewhere ; Martha is troubled about many 
things ; Mary has found that but one thing is needful. (Luke x. 41, 42.) 
There is but one such pearl (though every one may have that one), since 
the truth is one, even as God is one ; and the truth possessed brings 
that unity into the heart of man, which sin had destroyed ;f that which 
through sin had become as a mirror shattered into a thousand fragments, 
and every fragment reflected some different object, is now reunited again, 
and the whole with more or less clearness reflects, as it was intended at 
first to do, the one image of God. It is God alone in whom any intelligent 
creature can find its centre and true repose ; only when man has found 
him, does the great Eureka break forth from his lips ; in Augustine's 
beautiful and often quoted words, " Lord, thou hast made us for thee, 
and our heart is disquieted till it reacheth to thee. "J 

Before concluding the notice of this parable, it may just be worth 
while to mention, were it only for its singularity, an interpretation^ which 

Bohlen {Das Alt. Ind., v. 2, p. 122,) derives margarita from a Sanscrit word man- 
aarita ; signifying The Pure. Another name it bore signified The Beloved. 

* Theophylact says, that it was at a moment when it lightened that the con- 
ception of the pearl from the heavenly dew took place, which explains an otherwise 
obscure passage in Clement of Alex., Potter's ed., p. 1014, when, explaining this 
parable, he says, " This pearl is the most pellucid and pure Jesus, whom the Vir- 
gin conceived from the divine lightning." Augustine, too (Quast. ex Matth., qu. 
13), likens Christ to the pearl : though he does not bring out this point of com- 
parison : Est enim Yerbum Domini lucidum candore veritatis, et solidum firmitate 
aeternitatis, et undique sui simile pulcritudine divinitatis, qui Deus penetrata 
carnis testudine intelligendus est. Bochart {Hlerozoicon, pars 2, 1. 5, c. 8, in fine,) 
has a graceful bringing out of the points of likeness between the kingdom of God, 
and a pearl. 

f H. de Sto Yictore : Quia enim mens hominis in illo uno bono stare noluit, in 
quo potuit feliciter requiescere . . . projecta foras extra semetipsam, in multiplici- 
tatem rerum visibilium spargitur, et veritatem quam intus caecata a fonte haurire 
non potest, quasi per rivulos quosdam visibilium, arescentibus praecordiis, saltern 
sugcre conatur. These words are from a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which book 
itself is a profound commentary on this parable. 

% Fecisti nos propter te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in te. 
8 



114 THE PEARL. 

strangely reverses the whole matter. The merchant seeking goodly pearla 
is now Christ himself. The Church of the elect is the pearl of price ; 
which that he might purchase and make his own, he parted with all that 
he had, emptying himself of his divine glory and taking the form of a 
servant.* Or yet more ingeniously, the pearl, as in the common explana- 
tion, is still interpreted as the heavenly blessedness, and Christ the 
merchant, who that he might secure that blessedness to us and make it 
ours, though he was so rich, gladly made himself poor, buying that pearl 
and that treasure, — not indeed for himself, but for us.f 

* Salmeron (Serm. in Par. Evang., p. 66) applies the same to the parable pre- 
ceding : Homo qui invenit thesaurum, hoc est, pretiosam Ecclesiam electorum . . , 
Christus est qui pro comparando tanto sanctorum thesauro omnia bona sua dis- 
traxit. Compare the Brief Exposition of Matth. xiii., by J. N. Darby, pp. 30, 31. 

t So Drexelius (Opp., v. 1, p. 209) : Quis verior Christo Domino mercator, qui 
pretium sui sanguinis infinitum pro pretiosis illis mercibus dedit % Vere abiit, 
vendiditque omnia, famam, sanguinem, vitam exposuit, ut nobis coelum emeret. 



VII. 

THE DRAW NET. 

Matthew xiii. 47-50. 

This parable would at first sight seem to say exactly the same thing as 
that of the Tares. Maldonatus, led away by this apparent identity of 
purpose in the two, supposes that St. Matthew has not related the 
parables in the order in which the Lord spoke them, but that this 
should have immediately followed upon that. Here however he is 
clearly mistaken ; there is this fundamental difference between them, 
that the central truth of that is the present intermixture of the good 
and bad ; of this, the future separation ; of that, that men are not to 
effect the separation ; of this, that the separation will, one day, by God 
be effected ; so that the order in which we have them is evidently the 
right one, as that is concerning the gradual development, — this, the final 
consummation of the Church. Olshausen draws a further distinction 
between the two, that in that, the kingdom of God is represented rather 
in its idea, as identical with the whole world, which idea it shall 
ultimately realize ; in this, rather in its present imperfect form, as a 
less contained in a greater, which yet, indeed, has this tendency in itself 
to spread over and embrace all that greater ; — the sea being here the 
world, and the net, the Church gathering in its members from the world, 
as the net does its fish from the sea. 

Much of what has been already said, in considering the Tares, will 
apply here. The same use has been made of either parable ; there is 
the same continual appeal to this as to that in the Donatist controversy, 
and the present conveys, to all ages, the same instruction as that. — 
namely, that the Lord did not contemplate his visible Church as a com- 
munion in which there should be no intermixture of evil ; but as there 
was a Ham in the ark, and a Judas among the twelve, so there should 
be a Babylon even within the bosom of the spiritual Israel ; Esau shall 



116 THE DRAW NET. 

contend with Jacob even in the Church's womb,* till, like another 
Rebekah, she shall often have to exclaim, "Why am I thus?" (Gren. 
xxv. 22.) It conveys, too, the same lesson, that this fact does not justify 
self-willed departure from the fellowship of the Church, an impatient 
leaping over, or breaking through, the nets, as it is often called ; but the 
Lord's separation is patiently to be waited for, which shall surely arrive 
at the end of the present age.f 

It is worth our while to consider what manner of net it is to which 
our Lord likens the kingdom of heaven. In the heading of the chapter 
in our Bibles, it is called a draw net, and the particular kind is. distinctly 

* See Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxxvi. 3. 

f The following extracts will show the uses, either practical or controversial, to 
which the parable was turned. Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. Ixiv. 6) : Jam in mari 
capti per retia fidei, gaudeamus nos ibi natare adhuc intra retia, quia adhuc mare 
hoc ssevit procellis, sed retia quae nos ceperunt perducentur ad litus. Interim 
intra ipsa retia, fratres, bene vivamus, non retia rumpentes foras exeamus. Multi 
enim ruperunt retia et schismata fecerunt, et foras exierunt. Quia malos pisces 
intra retia captos tolerare se nolle dixerunt, ipsi mali facti sunt potuis, quani illi 
quos se non potuisse tolerare dixerunt. — The curious ballad verses which are found 
at the commencement of his Anti-Donatist Tracts, and which he wrote, as he says, 
to bring the subject within the comprehension of the most unlearned, begins with a 
reference to, and exposition of, this parable. 

Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare ; 
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere, 
Comparans regnum coelorum reticulo misso in mare, 
Congreganti multos pisces, orane genus hinc et inde, 
Quos cum traxissent ad litus, tunc coeperunt separare, 
Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare. 
. Quisquis recolit Evangelium, recognoscat cum timore : 
Videt reticulum Ecclesiam, videt hoc seculum mare, 
Genus autem mixtum piscis, Justus est cum peccatorc : 
Seculi finis est litus, tunc est tempus separare : 
Quando retia ruperunt, multum dilexerunt marc. 
Vasa sunt sedes sanctorum, quo non possunt pervenire. 

The following quotations from the minutes of the conference at Carthage wiL 
show how the Donatists sought to evade the force of the arguments drawn from 
this parable, and how the Catholics replied. They did not deny that Christ spake 
in this parable of sinners being found mingled with the righteous in the Church 
upon earth, yet it was only concealed sinners; they affirmed (Coll. Carth., d. 3,) 
hoc de reis latentibus dictum, quoniam reticulum in mari positum quid habeat, h 
piscatoribus, id est k sacerdotibus, ignorantur, donee extractum ad litus ad purga- 
tionem boni seu mali prodantur. Ita et latentes et in Ecclesia constitituti, et fc 
sacerdotibus ignorati. in divino judicio proditi, tanquam pisces mali k sanctorum 
consortio separantur. Augustine answers, with an allusion to Matt. iii. 12 (Ad 
Don. post Coll., c. 10) : Numquid et area sub aqua, vel terra, trituratur, aut certfc 
nocturnis horis, non in sole, conteritur, aut in eft. rusticus cascus operatur 1 — It is 
evident that their reply was a mere evasion ; that they took refuge in an accidental 
circumstance in the parable, namely, that so long as the nets are under water their 
contents cannot be seen, so as to avoid being plainly convinced of schism. 



THE DEATT NET. 117 

specified by the word in the original* It is a net of the largest size 
suffering nothing to escape from it ; and this, its all embracing nature, 
is certainly not to be left out of sight, as an accidental or unimportant 
circumstance, but contains in fact a prophecy of the wide reach and 
potent operation of the Gospel. The kingdom of heaven should hence- 
forward be a net, not cast into a single stream as hitherto, but into the 
broad sea of the whole world, and gathering or drawing together (John 
xi. 52) some out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. 
Or when it is said, that it " gatliered of every kind" we may understand 
both good and bad. As the servants who were sent to invite guests to 
the marriage supper (Matt. xxii. 10), "gathered together all, as many as 
they found, both bad and good ;" so here the fishers take fish of all kinds 
within the folds of the net ; — men of every diversity of moral character 
have the Gospel preached to them, and find themselves within the limits 
of the visible Church, f 

* 'S.ayhvT) (not as some derive it, from ecra> ayeiv, but from o-cittw, onero), a 
hauling net. as distinguished from the a/jL<p(f}\r)o-Tpov or casting net (Matt. iv. 18) ; 
in Latin, tragum, tragula, verriculum. It was of immense length. On the coast 
of Cornwall, where it is now used, and bears the same name, seine or sean, a cor- 
ruption of the Greek, which has come to us through the Vulgate and the Anglo- 
Saxon, it is sometimes half a mile in length ; and scarcely could have been much 
smaller among the ancients, since it is spoken of as nearly taking in the compass 
of an entire bay (vasta sagena, Manilius). It is leaded below, that it may sweep 
the bottom of the sea, and supported with corks above, and having been carried 
out so as to inclose a large space of sea, the ends are then brought together, and 
it is drawn up upon the beach with all that it contains. Cicero calls Yerres, with 
a play upon his name, exerriculum in provincial, in that he swept all before him ; 
and in the Greek Fathers we have ha.va.rov caynirq, KaraKKvcrfiov araynirn (see Sui- 
cer's Thes., s. v.) ; in each case with allusion to the all-embracing nature of this 
net. which allowed no escape. See Hab. i. 15-17, LXX, where the mighty reach 
of the Chaldean conquests is set forth under this image, and by this word. In 
this view of it. as an airepavrov Uktvov "Att^s. how grand is the comparison in Ho- 
mer (Odyss., 22. 384) of the slaughtered suitors, whom Ulysses saw, — 

wct t'x^uas, overt? aKirjeis 
koTKov es alyioXbv 7roA.njs e/crocrd-e haXacro"i]s 
SiKTvcp i^epvo'av ttoXvuttu. ol Se re iravres, 
KVJJLO& a\bs Tro&eovres, eVl i|/UjUc&otcn Kexwrat. 

There are curious notices in Herodotus (iii. 149 : vi. 31) of the manner in which 
the Persians swept away the conquered population from some of the Greek islands ; 
a chain of men, holding hand in hand and stretching across the whole island, ad- 
vanced over its whole length — thus taking, as it were, the entire population in a 
draw net : and to this process the technical name a-ayriveveiv was applied. Cf. 
Plato's Mentxenus (p. 42. Stallbaum's ed.) where the process is described ; Dc 
Legg. } 1. 3, p. 698 ; and Plutarch, De SoUrt. Animal., c. 26. There is a good 
account of the aayhvt] in the Did. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Rete. p. 823. 

t Beza, indeed, translates e'/c irajnbs yivovs. ex omni rerum genere, as mud, 



118 THE DRAW NET. 

But as all do not use the advantages which the communion of the 
Church has afforded them, an ultimate separation is necessary ; and this 
is next described ; the net, " when it ivas full, they drew to shore, and 
sat down and gatliered the good into vessels, but cast t/ie bad aivay." 
When the number of God's elect is accomplished, then the separation of 
the precious from the vile shall follow, of the just from sinners. It is 
most likely that from some image like that which our parable supplies, 
the leaving and taking of Matt. xxiv. 41, 42, is to be explained, — "the 
one shall be taken, and the other left." Probably there as here the 
taking is for blessedness, the selecting of the precious ; the leaving for 
destruction, the rejecting of the vile ; though the terms have sometimes 
been understood in exactly the opposite sense. . Yet hardly with justice ; 
for what is the " left " but the refused, and the refused but the refuse ?* 
Whether these li bad"\ are dead putrid fish, such as sometimes are 

shells, sea- weed, and whatever else of worthless would be gathered together within 
the folds of a net ; these things would then be understood by the <rcnrpdi, which are 
described in the next verse as cast away ; and so it is in the Geneva version, " of 
all kinds of things." But the plain sense of the parable would seem to determine 
that it is fish of all kinds as the Vulgate (ex omni genere piscium), and not things 
of all kinds, which are spoken of; in the words of H. de Sto Victore (Annott. in 
Matth.) : Congregat ex omnibus qui minoribus vel majoribus peccatis sunt a Deo 
divisi, et per multas iniquitates dispersi. Another name of the net, iravaypov, is 
exactly derived from this collecting of all sorts of prey within its folds. 

* The nature of this separation — that it will be with entire consideration — no 
hasty work confusedly huddled over — may be indicated in the sitting down of the 
fishers for the task of sorting the good from the bad. Thus Bengel, who to this 
tcc&io-avTes appends, Studiose ; cf. Luke xiv. 28, 31 ; xvi. 6. At the same time it 
completes the natural picture : 

in illo 
Cespite consedi, dum lina madentia sicco, 
Utque recenserem captivos ordine pisces. Ovn>. 

j- Scarpa, scil. Ix&v8ia. Grotius : Sunt nugamenta et quisquilte piscium, quod 
genus ut servatu indignum, videmus a piscatoribus abjici : {&$pura koi &ti/j.<x, Lu- 
cian ; pisces frivolos, Apuleius.) Yet Yitringa, in an instructive note (Erklttr. d, 
Parab., p. 344, seq.), refers to Athenaeus as using aairpol Ix&ves in opposition to 
irp6cr(paroi. As the latter are the fresh, the first must signify stale, or here yet 
more strongly, putrid (oairpbs, 6 ffea-rjir^s, Etym. Mag.), and he denies that we 
should depart from this, the primary signification of the word, to take up with the 
secondary. But on the other hand, to find dead fish in a net, though it will some- 
times happen, must be of rare occurrence, and of the list of fishes, which s for 
instance, Ovid gives in his fragment of the Halieuticon, how many, though per- 
fectly fresh, would be flung aside as not edible, as worthless or noxious, the im- 
munda chromis, merit6 vilissima salpa . . . Et nigrum niveo portans in corpore 
virus Loligo, durique sues : or again,— Et capitis duro nociturus scorpins ictu,— 
ail which might well have been gathered in this <xayi)W]. We have proof that at 
times some of them were, from a proverb in the Param. Graci (Oxf. 1836, p. 14), 
Which is explained as containing allusion to a fisherman, who had got such a sea- 



THE DRAW NET. 119 

inclosed witbiii a net, and brought to land. — or fish -worthless, and good 
for nothing, " that which was sick and unwholesome at the season," or 
fish such as from their kind, their smallness, or some other cause, are 
unfit to be either sold or eaten, and are therefore flung carelessly aside, 
to rot upon the beach, and to become food for the birds of prey (Ezek. 
xxxii. 3, 4), there is much question ; and it seems not easy, as it is not 
very important, to decide. 

These dead or worthless fish are " cast away? An entire freedom 
from all evil belongs to the idea of the Church, and this idea shall 
be ultimately realized. Notwithstanding all that mars its purity, and 
defiles its brightness, we confess our belief in a holy Catholic Chuich ; 
for we believe that whatever we see cleaving to it, which is not holy, is 
an alien disturbing element, which shall one day be perfectly separated 
from it. As all the prophets foreannounce such a glorious consummation, 
so in the Revelation it is contemplated as at last accomplished: '■'"without 
are dogs" (Rev. xxii. 15). where, as in the words used here, and in so 
many other passages, the Church is contemplated as a holy inclosure,* 
into which nothing unclean has a right to enter ; and from which, if it 
has by stealth or force effected an entrance, it shall sooner or later 
be excluded — shut out for ever, even as those ceremonially unclean, in 
witness of this, were obliged to remain for a season without the camp,, 
which was the figure of the true kingdom of God. — Our Lord offers no> 
explanation of the tt vessels " into which the good fish are gathered : nor, 
indeed, is any needed: what the "barn" was at ver. 30, the " vessels" 
are here; the '-many mansions" (John xiv. 2), which the Lord went to 
prepare for his people, the "everlasting habitations" (Luke xvi. 9), into 

scorpion in his net, by which he was stung, while carelessly handling its contents. 
Moreover, with Jewish fishermen this rejection of part of the contents would of 
necessity have taken place, not because some of the fish were dead, but because 
they were unclean ; "all that have not fins and scales shall be an abomination unto 
you." (Lev. xi. 9-12.) These probably were the cra-rrpd. Fritzche combines both 
meanings, for he explains it, inutiles et putridos. Our translation using the word 
" bad," has not determined absolutely for one sense or the other. See Suicer's 
TJies.. s. v. 

* From this image is to be explained the frequent use of the terms e£a>, and (as 
here) tK&aXKeiv e|w. The Church is regarded as complete in itself, with the line 
of its separation from the sinful nSo-fios distinctly drawn. All non-christians then 
are those " that are without" (ol e|«, Mark iv. 11 ; Col. iv. 5) ; Christ will in no 
wise cast out (ov $ e«)3a\w e|«), that is, expel from this holy inclosure, this 
city of refuge, those that come to him. (John vi. 37.) The prince of this world 
shall be cast out (John xii. 31), driven forth from God's redeemed creation. He 
that abideth not in Christ, is cast forth, or cast out, as a branch (John xv. 6),— 
the image continuing the same ; as the dead vine branches are flung forth from 
the vineyard and a riddance made cf them, so will these be expelled from the 
kingdom of God. 



120 THE DRAW NET. 

which he promises to receive them,* the " city which hath foundations M 
that Abraham looked for. (Heb. xi. 10.) 

But to whom is the task of separation to be confided ? Here I can* 
not consent to Olshausen's view, which is also Vitringa's,f that those who 
cast the net, and those who discriminate between its contents, being, in 
the parable, the same ; therefore, since the first are evidently the apostles 
and their successors, now become, according to the Lord's promise, 
-fishers of men" (Matt. iv. 19; Luke v. 10; Ezek. xlvii. 10; Jer. xvi. 
16) ;$ so the last must be — not the angelic ministers of Grod's judgments, 
but the same onessengers of the Covenant, and as such, angels, to whom, 
being equipped with divine power, the task of judging and sundering 
should be committed. No doubt the Church, in its progressive develop- 
ment, is always thus judging and separating (1 Cor. v. 4, 5 ; Jude 22, 
23) ; putting away one and another from her communion, as they openly 
declare themselves unworthy of it. But she does not count that she 
has thus cleansed herself, or that this perfect cleansing can be effected 
by any power which now she wields. There must be a judgment and 
sundering from without, and of this the final separation, every where 
else in Scripture we find the angels distinctly named as the executioners. 
(Matt. xiii. 41 ; xxiv. 31 ; xxv. 31 ; Rev. xiv. 18, 19.)§ It seems then 
contrary to the analogy of faith to interpret the present passage in any 
other manner. 

It is quite true, that in the familiar occurrence which supplies the 
groundwork of the parable, the same who carried out the net would na- 
turally also draw it to shore, — as it would naturally be they who would 

* Augustine (Serm. 368, c. 3) : Yascula sunt sanctorum sedes, et beatse vitse 
magna secreta. 

t Erklar. d. Parab., p. 351, seq. 

£ This last reference to Jer. xvi. 16, will only hold good, supposing we connect 
this verse not with what follows, but as Jerome does, with what goes before, and 
so make it not a threat, but a promise that into whatever place the Lord's people 
have been scattered, from thence he will be at all pains to recover them. In that 
fine Orphic hymn attributed to Clement of Alexandria (p. 312, Potter's ed.), Christ 
himself is addressed as the chief fisher ; and, as here, the world is the great sea 
of wickedness, out of which the saved, the holy fish, are drawn. 

'AAteD [jLepSirwv lx&v s o-yvovs 

tS>v (Tco^o/xeuwv, Kv/xaros ex&pou 

ire\dyovs kclkicls yXvKepy £co£ deAedfap. 

$ Moreover in each of the other parables of judgment, there is a marked dis- 
tinction, which it is little likely should have been here renounced, between the 
present ministers of the kingdom, and the future executors of doom — in the Tares 
between the servants and the reapers, in the Marriage of the King's Son (Matt. 
xxii. 3. 13) between the servants (dov\oi) and attendants (Sidnovoi), in the Pounds 
between the servants and those that stand by (ol irap^rruTes, Luke xix. 25). 



THE DRAW NET. 121 

also inspect its contents, for the purpose of selecting the good and cast- 
ing the worthless away ; but it is pushing this circumstance, which, in 
fact, is the weak side of the comparison, too far, to require that the same 
should also hold good in the spiritual thing signified. In the nearly allied 
parable of the Tares, there was no improbability in supposing those who 
watched the growth of the crop to be different from those who finally 
gathered it in ; and, accordingly, such a difference is marked : those are 
the servants, these are the reapers. The difference could not be marked 
in the same way here, but it is indicated, though lightly, in another way. 
The fishers are not once mentioned by name ; the imperfection of the 
human illustration to set forth the divine truth, is kept, as far as may be, 
out of sight, by the whole circumstance being told, as nearly as possible, 
impersonally. And when the Lord himself interprets the parable, he 
passes over, without a word, the beginning of it ; thus again drawing 
away attention from a circumstance, upon which to dwell might need- 
lessly have perplexed his hearers, — and explains only the latter part, 
where the point and stress of it lay : " So shall it be at tlie end of the 
ivorld : the angels shall come forth and sever tlie wicked from among tlie 
just j and sJw.ll cast tJiem into tlie furnace of fireP* Assuming then as 
we may, and indeed must, the angels of heaven here also to be the takers 
and leavers, we may find an emphasis in the " coming forth " which is 
attributed to them. Ever since the first constitution of the Church they 
have been hidden — withdrawn from men's sight for so long. But then 
at that great epoch of the kingdom, they shall again '-'•come forth" from 
before the throne and presence of God, and walk up and down among 
men, the visible ministers of his judgments. 

Though the parable, as was observed at the beginning, at first sight 
appears so similar to that of the Tares, as merely to teach over again 
the same truth, yet the moral of it, in fact, is very different. It is need- 
less to re-state the purpose of that ; but the moral of this is clearly, that 
we be not content with being inclosed within the Gospel-net, — that 
u they are not all Israel, who are of Israel," — but that, in the " great 
house " of the Church, u there are not only vessels of gold and silver, 
but of wood and earth, and some to honor, and some to dishonor ;" 
that each of us therefore seek to be " a vessel unto honor, sanctified and 
meet for the master's use" (2 Tim. ii. 20, 21) ; since in the midst of all 
the confusions of the visible Church, " the Lord knoweth them that are 
his," and will one day bring the confusion to an end, separating, and for 
ever, the precious from the vile — the true kernel of humanity from the 
husk in which for a while it was enveloped. 

* Chrysostom well calls the parable with reference to this verse, (poPepav irapa- 
fiox^v, and Gregory the Great says of the same {Horn. 11, in Evang.), Timendum 
est potius quam exponendum. 



122 THE DRAW NET. 

Having arrived at the conclusion of these seven parables, the present 
will be a fit opportunity for saying a few words concerning their mutual 
relation to one another, and how far they constitute a complete whole. 
The mystical number seven has offered to many interpreters a tempta- 
tion too strong to be resisted for the seeking in them some hidden mys- 
tery ; and when the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and the names 
of the seven original deacons (Acts vi. 5), have been turned into pro- 
phecy of seven successive states of the Church, not to speak of the seven 
Apocalyptic Epistles (Rev. ii. iii.), it was scarcely to be expected that 
these seven parables should have escaped being made prophetic of the 
same. 

They have been, in fact, so often thus dealt with as prophecy, that a 
late ingenious writer* needed not to have apologized for making an at- 
tempt of the kind, as though it were something altogether novel and un- 
heard of. Having offered his apologies, he proceeds : u It is my persua- 
sion that the parables in this chapter are not to be considered disjoint- 
edly, but to be taken together as a connected series, indicating, progress- 
ively, the several stages of advancement through which the mystical 
kingdom of Christ, upon earth, was to proceed, from its commencement 
to its consummation. ... It will be understood, then, that each parable 
has a period peculiarly its own, in which the state of things, so signified, 
predominates ; but when another state of things commences, the former 
does not cease. It only becomes less predominant ; operative as really 
as ever, but in a way subsidiary to that which now takes the lead. It 
will follow that each succeeding stage implies a virtual combination of all 
that has gone before, and, of course, the grand concluding scene will con- 
tain the sublimated spirit and extracted essence of the whole." Bengel 
announces the same theory,! and applies it thus : the first parable, he 
affirms, refers to the times of Christ and his immediate apostles, when 
was the original sowing of the word of eternal life. The second, that of 
the Tares, to the age immediately following, when watchfulness against 
false doctrine began to diminish, and heresies to abound. The third, 
that of the Mustard Seed, to the time of Constantine, when the Church, 
instead of even seeming to need support, evidently gave it, and the great 
ones of the earth came under its shadow and protection. The fourth, 

* Alex. Klox, in his Remains, v. 1, p. 408. 

f Praeter communes et perpetuas regni caelorum sive Ecclesiae rationes, conve- 
niunt hae septem parabolas, reconditissimum habcntes sensum, etiam in periodos et 
rotates Ecclesias divcrsas, ita quidem ut alia post aliam in complemento incipiat, 
non tamen prior quaelibet ante initium sequentis exeat. An essay which I know 
only by name, Reuss: Mcletema cle sensw septem Parab., Matth. xiii. prophetico, 
Hann. 1733, must no doubt be an exposition of the same theory. See against it 
Marckius, Syll. Dissert. Exerc. 4. 



THE DKAW NET. 123 

that of the Leaven, refers to the propagation of true religion through 
the whole world. The fifth, of the Hid Treasure, to the more hidden 
state of the Church, signified in the Apocalypse (xii. 6) by the woman 
flying into the wilderness. The sixth, that of the Pearl, to the glorious 
time when the kingdom shall be esteemed above all things, Satan being 
bound. The seventh, of the Draw Net, details the ultimate confusion, 
separation, and judgment. Any one who will take the trouble to com- 
pare the two schemes with one another, will be induced to suspect how 
merely capricious they both must be, when he notes the considerable 
differences that exist between them. They have two out of the seven, 
the fifth, and the sixth, altogether different. 

Yet though not thus historico-prophetical, these parables were in a 
certain sense prophetical, for they foretold things that were to come to 
pass ; only it was not the Lord's main purpose in uttering them to 
acquaint his servants with the future destinies of his Church, but rather 
to give them practical rules and warnings for their conduct. So, too, 
doubtless the seven have a certain unity, succeeding one another in natu- 
ral order, and having a completeness in themselves : — thus in the Sower 
are set forth the causes of the failures and success which the word of 
the Grospel meets, when it is preached in the world. In the Tares, the 
obstacles to the internal development of Christ's kingdom, even after a 
Church has been hedged in and fenced round from the world, are declar- 
ed, and are traced up to their true author, with a warning against the 
manner in which men might be tempted to remove those obstacles. The 
Mustard Seed and the Leaven declare the victorious might, — the first, 
the outward, and the second, the inward might of that kingdom ; and 
therefore implicitly prophesy of its development in spite of all these ob- 
stacles, and its triumph over them. As these two are objective and gen- 
eral, so the two which follow are subjective and individual, declaring the 
relation of the kingdom to every man, its supreme worth, and how those 
who have discovered that worth will be willing to renounce all things for 
its sake ; they have besides mutual relations already touched on, and 
complete one another. This last is the declaration, how that entire sep- 
aration from evil, which in the second we saw that men might be tempt- 
ed to anticipate by unpermitted means, shall yet come to pass,— -that 
separation which it is righteous to long for in God's own time, but 
wrong by self-willed efforts prematurely to anticipate ; — and looking 
forward to which, each is to strive that he may so use the present priv- 
ileges and means of grace, which the communion of the Church affords 
him, that he may be found among those that shall be the Lord's when 
he shall put away all the ungodly like dross, when he shall set a differ- 
ence between them who serve him, and them who serve him not. 



VIII. 
THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

Matthew xviii. 23—35. 

There is nothing in the discourse going before, to lead immediately to 
the question of Peter's, in answer to which this parable was spoken ; 
while, at the same time, the words, u Then came Peter," seem to mark 
that the connection is unbroken. It may perhaps be thus traced : Peter 
must have felt in his Lord's injunctions concerning the manner of deal- 
ing with an offending brother (ver. 15-17), that the forgiveness of his 
fault was necessarily implied as having already taken place ; since, till 
we had forgiven, we could not be in the condition to deal with him thus ; 
for this dealing, even to the exclusion of him from Church-fellowship, 
is entirely a dealing in love (2 Thess. iii. 14, 15), and with a view to his 
recovery. (See Sirac xix. 13-17.) Nor does it mean, as we might be 
too much inclined to understand it, that after the failure of these re- 
peated attempts to win him to a better mind, we should even then be 
justified in feeling strangeness towards him in our hearts ;* for com- 
pare the whole course of St. Paul's injunctions concerning the offender 
in the Corinthian church. , "Were that too the meaning, the exercise of 
the law of love would then be limited to three times (see ver. 15-17) ; 
and that in opposition to what immediately follows, where it is extended 
to seventy times seven.f Chrysostom observes, that when Peter in- 

* As neither, on the other hand, does the command to forgive till seventy times 
seven exclude a dealing, if need be, of severity, provided always it be a dealing in 
love. Thus Augustine (Semi. 83, c. 7) : Si per caritatem imponitur disciplina, de 
corde bnitas non recedat. Quid enim tarn pium quam medicus ferens ferramen- 
tum 1 Plorat secandus, et secatur : plorat urendus, et uritur. Non est ilia crude- 
litas, absit ut saeyitia medici dicatur. Saevit in vulnus, ut homo sanetur, quia si 
vulnus palpctur, homo perditur. Cf. Serm. 211. 

t Our Lord's "seventy times seven" of forgiveness makes a wonderful contrast, 
which has not escaped the notice of St. Jerome (v. 2, p. 565, edit. Bened.) to La- 
ntech's, the antediluvian Antichrist's, seventy and seven-fold of revenge. (Gen. iv. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 125 

stanced seven, as the number of times that an offending brother should 
be forgiven, he accounted certainly that he was doing some great thing, 
— that his charity was taking a large stretch, these seven being four 
times more than the Jewish masters enjoined.* He increased the num- 
ber of times with the feeling, no doubt, that the spirit of the new law 
of love which Christ had brought into the world, — a law larger, freer, 
more long-suffering, than the old, — required this.f There was then in 
Peter's mind a consciousness of this new law of love, — though an ob- 
scure one, since he supposed it possible that love could ever be overcome 
by hate, good by evil. But there was, at the same time, a fundamental 
error in the question itself, for in proposing a limit beyond which for- 
giveness should not extend, there was evidently implied the notion, that 
a man in forgiving, gave up a right which he might, under certain cir- 
cumstances, exercise. The purpose of our Lord's answer, — in other 
words, of the parable, — is to make clear that when God calls on a mem- 
ber of his kingdom to forgive, he does not call on him to renounce a 
right, but that he has now no right to exercise in the matter : asking 
for and accepting forgiveness, he has implicitly pledged himself to show 
it ; and it is difficult to imagine how any amount of didactic instruction 
could have conveyed this truth with at all the force and conviction of the 
following parable. 

" T/ierefore" to the end that you may understand what I say the 
better, " is tlie kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which 
would take account of his servants." This is the first of the parables in 
which God appears in his character of King. We are the servants 
with whom he takes account. Yet this is not, as is plain, the jinai 

24.) 'EfiSofMiKovTaKts k-KTa is not, as Origen and some others understand it 
70-[-7=77 ; for that would be rather k^ofii]Kovra em-dxis, but 70x7=490. 

* They grounded the duty of forgiving three times and not more, on Amos i. 3 : 
ri. 6 ; also on Job xxxiii. 29, 30 ; at this last passage see the marginal translation. 
Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. in loc. 

f While this is true, there were yet deeper motives for his selection of the num- 
ber seven. It is the number in the divine law with which the idea of remission 
(&(pe<ris) was ever linked. The seven times seventh year was the year of jubilee 
(ctos tt?s acpecrews), Lev. xxv. 28 ; cf. iv. 6, 17 ; xvi. 14, 15. It is true that we find 
it as the number of punishment or retribution for evil also; (Gen. iv. 15; Lev. 
xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 28; Deut. xxviii. 25; Ps. lxxix. 12; Prov. vi. 31 ; Dan. iv. 16; 
Rev. xv. 1 ;) yet this should not disturb or perplex, but rather confirm us in this 
view, since there lies ever in punishment the idea of restoration of disturbed 
relations, and so of forgiveness. (Ezek. xvi. 42.) It is the storm which violently 
restores the disturbed equilibrium of the moral atmosphere. Gregory of Nyssa 
then has a true insight into the reason why Peter should have named seven times. 
when he observes (Opp. v. 1, p. 159): YlapeT^p-naeu 6 Tlirpos, '6ti navcov irapaS6<recos 
ipX a ' 0S c^Tt, tov efiSofidda €/x<pao , iv e%eij/ twos a^eVews afiapTTifxarcvU, avcmavaeM 
rtXeias, ou crjiieiov to ffaf$f$ar6v icrTiv, rj efidS/ir] rjfjiepa airb yevtoreas. 



126 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

reckoning, " not identical with that of Matt. xxv. 19; 2 Cor. v. 10; but 
rather such a reckoning as that of Luke xvi. 2. To this he brings us 
by the preaching of the law, — by the setting of our sins before our face, 
— by awakening and alarming our conscience that was asleep before, — 
by bringing us into adversities, — by casting us into perils of death, so 
that we seem to see it near before us (2 Kin. xx. 4) ; he takes account 
with us when he makes us feel that we could not answer him one thing 
in a thousand, — that our trespasses are more than the hairs of our heads ; 
when through one means or another he brings our careless carnal secu- 
rity to an utter end. (Ps. 1. 21.) Thus David was summoned before 
God by the word of Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. xii.) ; tnus the Nine- 
vites by the preaching of Jonah, thus the Jews by John the Baptist. 

" And when lie had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which 
owed him ten tlwusand talents ;" he had not to go far, before he lighted 
on this one; he had only " begun to reckon." This perhaps was the 
first into whose accounts he looked ; there may have been others with 
yet larger debts behind. This one " ivas brought unto him" he never 
would have come of himself; far more likely he would have made that 
ten into twenty thousand ; for the secure sinner goes on treasuring up 
(Rom. ii. 5) an ever mightier sum, to be one day required of him. 
The sum here is immense, whatever talents we suppose these ty) have 
been, though it would differ very much in amount, according to the 
talent which we assumed; if, indeed, the Hebrew, it would then be a 
sum perfectly enormous ;* yet only therefore the fitter to express the 
greatness of every man's transgression in thought, word, and deed, 
against his God. 

In the case before us, the immensity of the sum may be best ex- 
plained by supposing the defaulter to have been one of the chief servants 
of the king, a farmer or administrator of the royal revenues ;f or seeing 
that in the despotisms of the East, every individual, from the highest to 

* How great a sum it was, we can most vividly realize to ourselves by compar- 
ing it with other sums of which mention is made in Scripture. In the construction 
of the tabernacle, twenty-nine talents of gold were used; (Exod. xxxviii. 21;) 
David prepared for the temple three thousand talents of gold, and the princes five 
thousand ; (1 Chron. xxix. 4-7 ;) the queen of Sheba presented to Solomon, as a 
royal gift, one hundred and twenty talents ; (1 Kin. x. 10 ;) the king of Assyria 
laid upon Hezekiah thirty talents of gold ; (2 Kin. xviii. 14;) and in the extreme 
impoverishment to which the land was brought at the last, one talent of gold was 
laid upon it, after the death of Josiah, by the king of Egypt. (2 Chron. xxxvi. 3.) 

f In the Jewish parable (Schoettgen's Hor. Hcb. v. 1, p. 155), which bears re- 
semblance to that before us, in so far as the sins of men are there represented un- 
der the image of enormous debt, which it is impossible to pay — it is the tribute 
due from an entire city, which is owing to the king, and which, at the entreaty of 
the inhabitants, he remits. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 127 

the lowest, stands in an absolutely servile relation to the monarch, is in 
fact his servant or slave, there is nothing in that name to hinder us from 
supposing him to be one, to whom some chief post of honor and dignity 
in the kingdom had been committed, — a satrap who should have remit- 
ted the revenues of his province to the royal treasury.* This is far 
more probable than that he is such an one as those servants in the 
parable of the Talents, to whom moneys were committed that they might 
trade with them : the greatness of the debt renders such a supposition 
very unlikely. Nor would the sale of the defaulter, with the confiscation 
of all his goods, have gone far to pay such a debt, unless he had been 
one living in great splendor and pomp ; though, 't is true, the words of 
the original do not imply that the king expected the debt to be dis- 
charged with the proceeds of the sale, but that whatever those proceeds 
were, they were to be rendered into his treasury. 

The sale of the debtor's wife and children, — for the king commanded 
them to be sold with him. — rested upon the theory that they were a part 
of his property. Thus, according to Roman law, the children being part 
of the property of the father, they were sold into slavery with him. 
That it was allowed under the Mosaic law to sell an insolvent debtor, is 
implicitly stated, Lev. xxv. 39 ; and ver. 41, makes it probable that his 
family .also came into bondage with him ; and we find allusion to the 
same custom in other places. (2 Kin. iv. 1 ; Neh. v. 6 ; Isai. 1. 1 ; lviii. 
6; Jer. xxxiv. 8-11; Amos ii. 6; viii. 6.) Michaelis* states that the 
later Jewish doctors declared against it, except in cases where a thief 
should be sold to make good the damage which he had done, and is in- 
clined to think that there was no such practice among the Jews in our 
Lord's time, but that this dealing with the servant is borrowed from the 
practice of neighboring countries. There is much to make this proba- 
ble : it is certain that the imprisoning of a debtor, which also we twice 
meet with in this parable (ver. 30, 34), formed no part of the Jewish 
law ; indeed, where the creditor possessed the power of selling him. into 

* According to Plutarch {Reg. et Imp. Apothegm.), it was exactly this sum of 
ten thousand talents with which Darius sought to buy off Alexander, that he 
should not prosecute his conquests in Asia ; — as also the payment of the same sum 
was imposed by the Romans, on Antiochus the Great, after his defeat by them : and 
when Alexander, at Susa, paid the debts of the whole Macedonian army, they 
amounted to only twice this sum, though every motive was at work to enhance the 
amount. (See Droysen's Gesch. Alexanders, p. 500.) Von Bohlen (Das. Alt. Ind., 
v. 2, p. 119) gives some curious and almost inci edible notices of the quantities of 
gold ii< the East,— I do not know whether the immensity of the sum may partly 
have moved Origen to his strange supposition, that it can only be the man of sin 
(2 Thes. ii.)'that is here indicated, or stranger still, the Devil ! Compare Thilo's 
Cod. Apocryphus, vol. 1, p. 887, and Neander's Kirch Gesch., v. 5, p. 1122. 

f Mos. Recht. t v. 3, p. 58-60. 



128 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

bondage, it would have been totally superfluous. " TJie tormentors* 
also (ver. 34), those who make inquisition by torture, have a foreign ap^ 
pearance, and would incline us to look for the locality of the parable else- 
where than in Judea. — For the spiritual significance, God may be said 
to sell those, whom he altogether alienates from himself, rejects, and de- 
livers for ever into the power of another. By the selling here may be 
Indicated such u everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 
and the glory of his power." Compare Ps. xliv. 12, " Thou sellest thy 
people for nought." 

The servant, hearing the dreadful doom pronounced against him by 
his lord, betakes himself to supplication, the one resource that remains 
to him ; he '-'fell down and ivorshipped him." The formal act of wor- 
ship, or adoration, consisted in prostration on the ground, and kissing of 
the fe"et and knees ; and here ©rigen bids us to note the nice observance 
of proprieties in the details of the parable. This servant " worshipped"- 
the king, for that honor was paid to royal personages ; but it is not said 
that the other servant worshipped, he only " besought" his fellow-ser- 
vant. His words, u Lord, have patience with me, and Iivillpay tliee all" 
are characteristic of the extreme fear and anguish of the moment, which 
made him ready to promise impossible things, even mountains of gold, 
if only he might be delivered from the present danger. Whemwords 
of a like kind find utterance from the lips of the sinner, now first con- 
vinced of his sin, they show that he has not yet attained to a full insight 
into his relations with his God — that he has yet much to learn ; as namely 
this — that no future obedience can make up for past disobedience ; since 
that future God claims as his right, as only his due : it could not then, 
even were it perfect, which it will prove far from being, make compensa- 
tion for the past. "We may hear then in the words, the voice of self- 
righteousness, imagining that, if only time were allowed, it could make 
good all the shortcomings of the past. The words are exceedingly im- 
portant, as very much explaining to us the later conduct of this man. It 
is clear that he had never come to a true recognition of the immensity of 
his debt. Little, in the subjective measure of his own estimate, was 
forgiven him, and therefore he loved little, or not at all. It is true that 
by his demeanor and his cry he did recognize his indebtedness, else 
would there have been no setting of him free : and he might have gone 
on, and had he been true to his own mercies, he would have gone on, to 
an ever fuller recognition of the grace shown him : but as it was, in a 
little while he lost sight of it altogether. 

However, at the earnestness of his present prayer " the lord of that 
servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and foi-gave him 
the debt." The severity of God only endures till the sinner is brought 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 129 

to recognize his guilt, it is indeed, like Joseph's harshness witK his bre« 
thren, nothing more than love in disguise ; — and having done its work, 
having brought him to the acknowledgment of his guilt and misery, re- 
appears as grace again, granting him more than even he had dared to 
ask or to hope, loosing the bands of his sins and letting him go free. 
His lord "forgave him the debt"* and thus this very reckoning with him, 
which at first threatened him with irremediable ruin, might have been 
the chiefest mercy of all ; bringing indeed his debt to a head, but only 
so bringing it, that it might be put away. So is it evermore with men. 
There cannot be a forgiving in the dark. God will forgive ; but he will 
have the- sinner to know what and how much he is forgiven ; he sum- 
mons him with that " Come now and let us reason together," before the 
scarlet is made white. (Isai. i. 18.) The sinner shall have the sentence 
of death in him first, for only so will the words of life and pardon have 
any true meaning for him. 

But he to whom this mercy was shown did not receive it aright 
(Wisd. xii. 19) ; too soon he forgot it, and showed that he had forgotten 
it by his conduct towards his fellow- servant. For going out from the pre- 
sence of his lord, he found, immediately after, as would seem, and when 
the sense of his lord's goodness should have been yet fresh upon him, 
u one of his felloiv-servants who owed him a hundred pence" How strik- 
ing and instructive is that word " going out" — slight as it seems, yet 
one of the key-words of the parable. For how is it that we are ever in 
danger of acting as this servant? Because we "go out" of the presence' 
of our G-od ; because we do not abide there, with an ever-lively sense of 
the greatness of our sin, and the greatness of his forgiveness. By the 
servant's going out is expressed the sinner's forge tfulness of the greatness 
of the benefits which he has received from his G-od.f The term u fellow- 
servant" here does not imply any equality of rank between these two, 
or that they filled similar offices ]% but indicates that they stood both in 
the same relation of servants to a common lord. And the sum is so 
small, one hundred pence, — as the other was so large, ten thousand tal- 



* Compare Chardin (Voy. en Perse, Langles' ed., v. 5, p. 285): Toute disgrace 
en Perse emporte infalliblement avec soi la confiscation des biens, et c'est un re- 
verse prodigieux et 6pouvantable que se changement de fortune, car un homme se 
trouve &6nu6 en un instant si entierement qu'il n'a rien a lui. On lui 6te ses biens, 
ses esclaves, et quelquefois jusqu'a sa femme et ses enfans . . . Son sort s'adoucit 
dans la suite. Le roi declare sa volonte" sur son sujet. On lui rend presque tou- 
jours sa famille, partie de ses esclaves, et ses meubles, et assez souvent il revient 
au bout d'un temps a etre r^tabli dans lcs bonnes graces de la cour, et a rentrer 
dans les emplois. 

f Theopbylact : OvSels yap iu rq> ©eo? /xevwv, a<rv[jnrafrfis. 

£ Such would have been 6{x68ovKos, this is <rvv8ov\os. 
9 



130 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. ' 

ents, — to show how little man can offend against his brother, compared 
with the amount in which every man has offended against God,* so that, 
in Chrysostom's words, these offences to those are as a drop of water to 
the boundless ocean. f 

The whole demeanor of the man in regard of his fellow-servant is 
graphically described ; " He laid hands on him, and took him by the 
throat,\ saying, Pay me that thou owestP "When some press the word 
in the original, and find therein an aggravation of this servant's harshness 
and cruelty, as though he was not even sure whether the debt were owing 
or not,§ this is on every ground to be rejected. That the debt was 
owing is plainly declared ; — he found a fellow-servant " who owsd him a 
hundred pence ,-" and the very point of the whole parable would be lost by 
the supposition that we had here an oppressor or extortioner of the com- 
mon sort. In that case it would not have needed to speak a parable of 
the kingdom of heaven ; the law would have condemned such a one ; but 
here we have a far deeper lore — namely this, that it is not always right, 
but often most wrong, the most opposite to right, to press our rights, 
that in the kingdom of grace, the summum jus may be indeed the sum- 
ma injuria. This man was one who would fain be measured to by God 
in one measure, while he measured to his brethren in another. But this 
may not be ; each man must take his choice ; he may dwell in the king- 
dom of grace ; but then, receiving grace, he must show grace ; finding 
love, he must exercise love. If on the contrary he exacts the uttermost, 
pushes his rights as far as they will go, he must look to bave the utter- 
most exacted from him, and in the measure that he has meted to have it 
measured back to him again. — It was in vain that " his felloio-sefrvant fell 
down at his feet, and besought him" using exactly the same words of 
entreaty which he, in the agony of his distress, had used, and using had 

* The Hebrew talent =300 shekels. (Exod. xxxviii. 25, 26.) Assuming this, 
the proportion oY the two debts would be as follows : 

10000 talents : 100 pence :: 1250000 : 1. 
that is, one million two hundred and fifty thousand to one. 

•f Melancthon : Ideo autem tanta summa ponitur, ut sciamus nos valde multa 
et magna peccata habere coram Deo. Sicut facile invenies multa, si vitam tuam 
aspicies ; magna est securitas carnalis, magna negligentia in invocatione, magna 
diffidentia, et multae dubitationes de Deo. Item vagantur sine fine cupiditates 
varia?. 

X Erasmus : "Eirviyev, obtorto collo trahebat, . . . pertinet ad vi trahentem vo. 
in carcerem, vel in judicem. 

§ The elf rt 6<pel\eis, which reading, as the more difficult, is to be preferred to 
6 n ocpeixets, and which is retained by Lachmann, does not imply any doubt as to 
Whether the debt were really due or no ; but the conditional form was originally, 
though of course not here, a courteous form of making a demand, as there is often 
the same courteous use of taws. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 131 

found mercy : he continued inexorable ; he " tvent" that is, departed, 
dragging the othe* with him till he could consign him into the safe 
keeping of the jailer; and thus in the words of St. Chrysostom, he 
refused u to recognize the port in which he had himself so lately escaped 
shipwreck ;" but delivered over his fellow-servant to the extreme severity 
of the law, unconscious that he was condemning himself, and revoking 
his own mercy. 

But such is man, so hard-hearted and cruel, when he walks other- 
wise than in a constant sense of forgiveness received from God ; igno- 
rance or forgetfulness of his own guilt makes him harsh, unforgiving, *nd 
cruel to others ; or if by chance he is not so, he is only hindered from 
being so by the weak defences of natural character, which may at any 
moment be broken down. The man who knows not his own guilt, is ever 
ready to exclaim, as David in the time of his worst sin (2 Sam. xii. 5), 
B The man that hath done this thing shall surely die ;" to be as extreme 
in judging others, as he is slack in judging himself ; while, on the other 
hand, it is they that are spiritual to whom Paul commits the restoring 
of a brother who should be '-overtaken in a fault" (Gral. vi. 1); and 
when he urges on Titus the duty of being gentle, and showing meekness 
unto all men, he adds (Tit. iii. 3), "For we ourselves also were sometimes 
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures." In 
exact'harmony with this view is that passage (Matt. i. 19), in which it is 
said that Joseph, "being a, just man,"* would not make Mary a public 
example, whom yet he must have believed to have done him grievous 
wrong. It is just in man to be humane, — to be humane is human: 
none but the altogether righteous may press his utmost rights ; whether 
he will do so or no is determined by altogether different considerations, 
but he has not that to hold his hand, which every man has, even the 
sense of his own proper guilt. (John viii. 7-9.) 

But not in heaven only is there indignation, when men are thus 
measuring to others in so different a measure from that which has been 
measured to them. There are on earth also those who have learned 
what is the meaning of the mercy which the sinner finds, and the 
obligations which it lays on him — and who grieve over all the lack of 
love and lack of forbearance which they behold around them : " W7ie?i 
his felloiv-servants saw what teas done, tJiey were very sorry." TJiey 
were sorry — their lord (ver. 34) was wroth ; to them grief, to him anger, 
is ascribed. The distinction is not accidental, nor without its grounds. 
In man, the sense of his own guilt, the deep consciousness that whatever 
sin he sees come to ripeness in another, exists in its germ and seed in 
his own heart, the feeling that all flesh is one, and that the sin of one 

* AIkcuos, which Chrysostom makes there=x/ ,, 7 ' T <k> iineucfis- 



132 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

calls for humiliation from all, will ever cause sorrow to be the predo 
minant feeling in his heart, when the spectacle of mo/al evil is brought 
before his eyes ; but in God the pure hatred of sin,* which is, indeed, 
his love of holiness at its negative side, finds place. Being sorry, they 
" came and told unto their lord all that ivas done ;" even as the right* 
eous complain to G-od, and mourn in their prayer over the oppressions 
that are wrought in their sight : the things which they cannot set right 
themselves, the wrongs which they are not strong enough to redress 
themselves, they can at least bring unto him, and he hears their cry. 
The king summons the unthankful and unmerciful servant into his 
presence, and addresses to him words of severest rebuke, which it is 
noticeable he had not used before for his debt's sake, but now he uses 
on account of his cruelty and ingratitude — "O thou nicked servant ,\ 
I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not 
tlwu also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had 
pity on thee ?" — wert thou not bound, was there not a moral obligation 
on thee, to show compassion, — even as compassion had been shown to 
thee ? J We may here observe, that the guilt laid to his charge is this. 
not that, needing mercy, he refused to show it, but that having received 
mercy he remains unmerciful still ; a most important difference ! — so 
that they who like him are hard-hearted and cruel, do not thereby bear 
witness that they have received no mercy ; on the contrary, the stress of 
their offence is, that having received an infinite mercy, they remain 
unmerciful yet. The objective fact, the great mercy for the world, that 
Christ has put away sin and that we have been made partakers in our 
baptism of that benefit, stands firm, whether we allow it to exercise a 
purifying, sanctifying, humanizing influence on our hearts or not. Our 
faith apprehends, indeed, the benefit, but has not created it, any more 
than our opening our eyes upon the sun has set it in the heavens. 

"And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to tlie tormentors" 
according to that word, " He shall have judgment without mercy, that 



* On the language of Scripture, attributing anger, repentance, jealousy to God, 
there are some very valuable remarks in Augustine's reply to the cavils of a Mani- 
chaean {Con. Adv. Leg. et PropL, 1. 1, c. 20) : Pcenitentia Dei non est post errorem: 
Ira Dei not habet perturbati animi ardorem : Misericordia Dei non habet compa- 
tientis miserum cor : Zelus Dei non habet mentis livorem. Sed pcenitentia Dei 
dicitur rcrum in ejus potestate constitutarum hominibus inopinata mutatio : Ira 
Dei est vindicta peccati : Misericordia Dei est bonitas opitulantis : Zelus Dei est 
providentia qua non sinit eos quos subditos habet impune amare quod prohibet. 
Cf. Ad Simplic, 1. 2, qu. 2. 

t Bengel : Sic non vocatus fuerat ob debitum —a remark which Origen and 
Chrysostom had already made. 

X See Chrysostom, De Simult., Horn 20, 6, an admirable discourse. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 133 

hath showed no mercy." (Jam. ii. 13.) Before he had dealt with him 
as a creditor with a debtor, now as a judge with a criminal. " The 
tormentors" are not merely the keepers of the prison as such ; but those 
who also, as the word implies, shall make the life of the prisoner bitter 
to him; even as there are "tormentors" in that world of woe, whereof 
this prison is a figure — fellow-sinners and evil angels — instruments of 
the just, yet terrible judgments of God.* But here it is strange that 
the king delivers the offender to prison and to punishment not for his 
ingratitude or cruelty, but for the very debt which would appear before 
to have been entirely and without conditions remitted to him. When 
Hammond says, that the king " revoked his designed mercy," and would 
transfer that to the relation between God and sinners, this is an example 
of those evasions of a difficulty by help of an ambiguous expression, or 
a word ingeniously thrust in by the commentator, which are so frequent 
even in some of the best interpreters of Scripture. It was not merely 
a mercy designed, the king had not merely purposed to forgive him, but 
in the distinct words of the earlier part of the parable he "forgave him 
tlie debt." An ingenious explanation is that which would make the debt 
for which he is now cast into prison, the debt of mercy and love, which 
he had not paid, but which yet was due, according to that word of St. 
Paul's, " Owe no man any thing, but to love one another ;" but neither 



* Grotius makes the fia<ravi<rTat meYe\y=zBea-fjLo^v\aK€s, and Kuinoel, who ob- 
serves that debtors are given to safe keeping, but not to tortures ; but this seems 
rather inaccurately stated, since we know, for instance, that in early times of Rome 
there were certain legal tortures, in the shape, at least, of a chain weighing fifteen 
pounds, and a pittance of food barely sufficient to sustain life (see Arnold's Hist, 
of Rome, v. 1, p. 136), which the creditor was allowed to apply to the debtor foi 
the purpose of bringing him to terms ; and no doubt they often did not stop here. 
The old centurion (Livy, 2. 23) complains : Ductum se ab creditore non in servi- 
tium, sed in ergastulum et carnificinam esse : inde ostentare tergum, foeduni recen- 
tibus vestigiis vulnerum. In the East, too, where there is a continual suspicion 
that those who may appear the poorest, and who affirm themselves utterly insol- 
vent, are actually in possession of some , secret hoards of wealth, as is very often 
the case, the torture (fida-avos), in one shape or another, would be often applied, as 
we know that it is often nowadays, to make the debtor reveal these hoards ; or if 
not with this hope, his life is often made bitter to him for the purpose of wringing 
the money demanded, from the compassion of his friends. In all these cases the 
jailer would be naturally the instrument employed for the purpose of inflicting 
these parns on the prisoner ; (see 1 Kin. xxii. 27 ;) so that there is no reason why 
we should understand by these "tormentors" merely the keepers of the prison, 
"the jailers," as Tyndale's and Cranmer's Bibles give it, and not rather accept the 
word in its proper sense. Besides, if the unforgiving servant had merely been 
given into ward, his punishment would now have been less than that with which 
ho was threatened, when his offence was not near so great as now it had become— 
for then he was to have been sold into slavery. 



134 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

can this be accepted as satisfactory. Nor are the cases of Adonijah and 
Shimei (1 Kin. ii.), which are sometimes adduced, altogether in point. 
They no doubt, on occasion of their later offences, were punished far 
more severely than probably they would have been, had it not been for 
their former offences ; yet still it is not the former crimes which are 
revived that they may be punished, but the later offence which calls 
down its own punishment ; and moreover, to produce parallels from the 
Questionable acts of imperfect men, is but a poor way of establishing the 
righteousness of God. 

. The question herein involved, Do sins, once forgiven, return on the 
sinner through his after offences ? is one frequently and fully discussed 
by the Schoolmen;* and of course this parable, and the arguments 
which may be drawn from it, always take a prominent place in such 
discussions. But it may be worthy of consideration, whether the 
difficulties do not arise mainly from our allowing ourselves in too 
dead and formal a way of contemplating the forgiveness of sins ; — from 
our suffering the earthly circumstances of the remission of a debt to 
embarrass the heavenly truth, instead of regarding them as helps, but 
at the same time weak and often failing ones, for the setting forth that 
truth. One cannot conceive of remission of sins apart from living 
communion with Christ ; this is one of the great ideas brought out in 
our baptismal service, that we are members of a righteous Person 
and justified in him. But if through sin we cut ourselves off from 
communion with him, we fall back into a state of nature, which is ot 
itself a state of condemnation and death, a state upon which therefore 
the wrath of God is abiding. If then, laying apart the contemplation 
of a man's sins as a formal debt, which must either be forgiven him or 
not — we contemplate the life out of Christ as a state of wrath, and the 
life in Christ as a state of grace, the first a walking in darkness, and 
the other a walking in the light, we can better understand how a man's 
sins should return upon him ; that is, he sinning anew falls back into the 
darkness out of which he had been delivered, and no doubt all that he 
has done of evil in former times adds to the thickness of that darkness, 
causes the wrath of God to abide more terribly on that state in which 
he now is, and therefore upon him. (John v. 14.) Even as also it must 
not be left out of sight that all forgiveness short of the crowning act of 

* By Pet. Lombard, 1. 4, dist. 22; AauiNAS (Sum. Theol., pars 3, qu.*88), and 
H. de Sto Victore. (De Sacram., 1. 2, pars 14, c. 9 : Utrum peccata seniel dimissa 
redcant.) Cf. Augustine, De BapL, Con. Don., 1. 1, c. 12. Cajetan, quoting Rom. 
xi. 29, "the gifts of God are without repentance" (d/xeTa/xeATjTo), explains thus 
the recalling of the pardon which had once been granted : Repetuntur debita semel 
donata, non ut fuerant prius debita, sed ut inodd effecta sunt materia ingratitudi- 
nis, — which is exactly the decision of Aquinas. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 135 

forgiveness and mercy, which will find place on the day of judgment, 
and will be followed by a total impossibility of sinning any more, is 
conditional, — in the very nature of things so conditional, that the 
condition must in every case be assumed, whether stated or no 5 that 
condition being that the forgiven man abide in faith and obedience, in 
that state of grace into which he has been brought ; which he whom the 
unmerciful servant here represents, had not done, but on the contrary 
evidently and plainly showed by his conduct, that he had "forgotten 
that he was purged from his old sins." He that is to partake of 
the final salvation must abide in Christ, else he will be "cast forth 
as a branch, and withered." (John xv. 6.) This is the condition, not 
arbitrarily imposed from without, but belonging to the very essence of 
the salvation itself; as, if one were drawn from the raging sea, and set 
upon the safe shore, the condition of his continued safety would be that 
he abode there, and did not again cast himself into the raging waters. 
In this point of view an interesting parallel will be supplied to this 
parable by 1 John i. 7, " If we walk in the light as he is in the light, 
we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his 
Son cleanseth us from all sin." He whom this servant represents does 
not abide in the light of love, but falls back into the old darkness ; he 
has, therefore, no fellowship with his brother, and the cleansing power 
of that blood ceases from him. 

It is familiar to many that the Romish theologians have often found 
an argument for purgatory, in the words " till he should pay all that was 
due"* as on the parallel expression, Matt. v. 26 ; as though they desig- 
nated a limit beyond which the punishment should not extend. But it 
seems plain enough that the phrase is nothing more than a proverbial 
one, to signify that the offender should now be dealt with according to 
the extreme rigor of the law ;f that he should have justice without mer- 
cy, that always paying, he should never have paid off his debt. For 
since man could never acquit the slightest portion of the debt in which 
he is indebted to God, the putting that as a condition of his liberation, 
which it was impossible could ever be fulfilled, was the strongest possi- 
ble way of expressing the eternal duration of his punishment ; just as, 
when the Phocseans abandoning their city swore that they would not 
return to it again, till the mass of iron which they plunged into the sea 
appeared once more upon the surface, it was in fact the most emphatic 

* See Gerhard's Loci Thcoll., loc. 27, c. 8. Chrysostom rightly explains it, 
roureffTi SirjveKus, ovre yap airoSuxrei ttot4, and Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon., 
L 1. c. 11) : Donee solvas . . . miror si non earn significat poenam quae vooatur aeter- 
na. So Remigius : Semper solvet, sed nunquam persolvet. 

f Just as the Roman proverbs, Ad numum solvere, ad extremum assem sol- 
vere. 



136 THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 

form they could devise of declaring that they would never return ;— * 
such an emphatic expression is the present.* 

The Lord concludes with a word of earnest warning : " So likewise 
shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts\ for- 
give not every one his brotlier tJieir trespasses." " So" — with the same 
rigor ; such treasures of wrath, as well as such treasures of grace, are 
with him. He who could so greatly forgive, can also so greatly punish. 
Chrysostom observes, that he says, my heavenly Father, meaning to 
imply — yours he will not he, since so acting you will have denied the 
relationship; but this observation can scarcely be correct, since our 
Lord often says, My Father, when no such reason can be assigned (as 
ver. 19). On the declaration itself we may observe that, according to 
the view given in Scripture, the Christian stands in a middle point, 
between a mercy received and a mercy yet needed. Sometimes the first 
is urged upon him as an argument for showing mercy — " forgiving one 
another as Christ forgave you" (Col. iii. 13; Ephes. iv. 32); sometimes 
the last, " Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy" (Matt, 
v. 7); "Forgive and ye shall be forgiven" (Luke vi. 37; Jam. v. 9): 
and so the son of Sirach (xxviii. 3, 4), " One man beareth hatred against 
another, and doth he seek pardon from the Lord ? he showeth no mercy 
to a man who is like himself, and doth he ask forgiveness of his own 
sins !" — so that while he is ever to look back on the mercy received as 
the source and motive of the mercy which he shows, he also looks for- 
ward to the mercy which he yet needs, and which he is assured that the 
merciful, according to what Bengel beautifully calls the Benigna talio 
of the kingdom of God, shall receive as a new provocation to its abun- 
dant exercise. Tholuck has some good remarks upon this point : " From 
the circumstance that mercy is here [Matt. v. 7] promised as the recom- 
pense of anterior mercy on our part, it might indeed be inferred that 
under * merciful' we are to imagine such as have not yet in any degree 
partaken of mercy ; but this conclusion would only be just on the sup- 
position, that the divine compassion consisted in an isolated act, which 
could be done to man but once for all. Seeing, however, that it is an 
act which extends over the whole life of the individual, and reaches its 

* Just so Macbeth thinks he has the strongest assurance of safety, while that is 
put as a condition of his defeat, which he counts can never come to pass : 

" Let them fly all ; 
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane 
I cannot taint with fear." 

f 'A7rb ra>v KapdLa>v= &k tyvxys, Ephes. vi. 6 ; to the exclusion, not merely of acta 
of hostility, but also of all fivrjaiKaKla. II. de Sto Victore : Ut nee opere exerceat 
vindictam, nee corde reservet malitiam ; and Jerome : Dominus addidit, de cordi- 
bus vestris, ut omnem simulationem ficts9 pacis averteret. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT. 137 

culminating point in eternity, it behooves us to consider the compassion 
of God for man, and man for his brethren, as reciprocally calling forth 
and affording a basis for one another."* And this seems the explanation 
of a difficulty suggested by Origen,f namely, where in time we are to 
place the transactions shadowed forth in this parable ! — for on the one 
hand, there are reasons why they should be placed at the end of this 
present dispensation, since, it might be asked, when else does God take 
account with his servants for condemnation or acquittal ? while yet on 
the other hand, if it were thus placed at the end of the dispensation, 
what further opportunity would there be for the forgiven servant to 
show the harshness which he actually does show to his fellow-servant ? 
The difficulty disappears, when we no longer contemplate forgiveness as 
an isolated act, which must take place at some definite moment, but 
consider it as ever going forward, — as running parallel with and extend- 
ing over the entire life. J 

* Auskgung der Bergpredigt, p. 93. 

f Comm. in Matth., xviii. 

$ There is a fine story illustrative of this parable, told by Fleury {Hist. Eccles., 
v. 2, p. 334.) It is briefly this. Between two Christians at Antioch enmity and 
division had fallen out. After a while one of them desired to be reconciled, but 
the other, who was a priest, refused. "While it was thus with them, the persecu- 
tion of Valerian began ; and Sapricius, the priest, having boldly confessed himself 
a Christian, was on the way to death. Nicephorus met him and again sued for 
peace, which was again refused. "While he was seeking and the other refusing, 
they arrived at the place of execution. He that should have been the martyr was 
here terrified, offered to sacrifice to the gods, and despite the entreaties of the 
other did so. making shipwreck of his faith : while Nicephorus, boldly confessing, 
stepped in his place, and received the crown which Sapricius lost. This whole 
story runs finely parallel with our parable. Before Sapricius could have had grace 
to confess thus to Christ, he must have had his own ten thousand talents forgiven ; 
but refusing to forgive a far lesser wrong, to put away the displeasure he had 
taken up on some infinitely lighter grounds against his brother, he forfeited all the 
advantages of his position, Ms Lord was angry, took away from his grace, and suf- 
fered him again to faR 'inder those powers of evil from which he had been once 
delivered. It comes out, too, in this story, that it is not merely the outward wrong 
and outrage upon a brother, which constitutes a likeness to the unmerciful servant, 
but the unforgiving temper, even apart from all such. So Augustine (Quast. 
Evang., 1. 1, qu. 25) : Noluit ignoscere, . . . intelligendum, tenuit contra eum hunc 
mm, ut supplicia illi vellet. 



IX. 

THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

Matthew xx. 1-16. 

This parable stands in closest connection with the four last verses of 
the preceding chapter, and can only be rightly understood by their help, 
so that the actual division of the chapters is here peculiarly unfortunate, 
causing, as it has often done, this parable to be explained quite indepen- 
dently of the context, and without any attempt to show the circumstances 
out of which it sprung. And yet on the right tracing of this connection, 
and the showing how the parable grew out of, and was in fact an answer 
to, Peter's question, u What shall we have V 1 the success of the exposi- 
tion will mainly depend. The parable now to be considered is only sec- 
ond to that of the Unjust Steward in the number of explanations,* and 
those the most widely different, that have been proposed for it ; as it is 
also only second to that, if indeed second, in the difficulties which beset 
it. These Chrysostomf states clearly and strongly; though few, I think, 
will be wholly satisfied with his solution of them. There is first the dif- 
ficulty of bringing the parable into harmony with the saying by which 
it is introduced and concluded, and which it is plainly intended to illus- 
trate : and secondly, there is the moral difficulty, the same as finds place 
in regard of the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, — ■ 
namely, how can one who is himself a member of the kingdom of God 
u be held," as Chrysostom terms it, " by that lowest of all passions, envy, 
and an evil eye," grudging in his heart the favors shown to other mem- 
bers of that kingdom? or, if it be denied that these murmurers and 
envious are members of that kingdom, how is this denial reconcilable 

* Hase (Leben Jesu, p. 147), gives the literature connected with this parable, 
consisting of no less than fifteen essays, most of them separately published ; and 
has yet omitted some, of which the titles are given in "Wolf's Cura. 

t In Matth., Horn. 64. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 139 

with the fact of their having labored all day in the vineyard, and ulti- 
mately carrying away their own reward ? And lastly, there is the dif- 
ficulty of deciding what is the salient point of the parable, the main doc- 
trine which we are to gather from it. 

Of those who have sought to interpret it there are first they, who 
see in the equal penny to all, the key to the whole matter, and who say 
that the lesson to be learned is this, — the equality of rewards in the 
kingdom of God.* This was the explanation which Luther gave in his 
earlier works, though he afterwards saw reason to alter his opinion. But 
however this may appear to agree with the parable,! it evidently agrees 
not at all with the saying, of which that is clearly meant to be the illus- 
tration — " Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first ;" \ 
for that equality would be, — not a reversing of their order, but a setting 
of all upon a level. Others afiirm that the parable is meant to set forth 
this truth, — that God does not regard the length of time during which 
men are occupied in his work, but the fidelity and strenuous exertion 
with which they accomplish that work.§ Of this view there will pre- 
sently be occasion to speak more at large ; it will be enough now to ob- 
serve that the assumption that the last-hired laborers had worked more 
strenuously than the first, is entirely gratuitous ; — this circumstance, if 
the narrative had turned on it, would have scarcely been omitted. — 
Calvin again asserts that its purpose is to warn us against being over- 
confident, because we have begun well ; ]| lest (though this is not his illus- 

* Augustine also (Serm. 343) says of the penny to all : Denarius ille vitae aster- 
na est, quae omnibus par est, — but without affirming equality in the kingdom of 
God ; for all the stars, as he goes on to say, are in the same firmament, yet " one 
star differeth from another star in glory :" (Splendor dispar, ccelum commune.) 
Cf. De Sanct. Virgin., c. 26. In like manner Bernard, In Ps. Qui habitat, 
Serm. 9, 4 ; and see Ambrose, Ep. 7, c. 11, and Gregory the Great, Moral, 1. 4, 
c. 36. 

t Yet Spanheim (Dub. Evang., v. 3, p. 785) is not easily answered, when 
against this he says : Nee enim per denarium vita seterna intelligi potest, quippe 
qui denarius datur etiam murmuratoribus et invidis, nee datus exsatiat, et datur 
illis qui recedere jubentur a Domino, (ver. 1 i.) Atqui nee murmuratorum portio 
est vita aeterna, nee invidorum, nee homines a Deo abducit, sed conjungit cum illo, 
nee ulli datur, cui non plenam adferat satietatem gaudiorum. 

| Fritzche, indeed, finds no difficulty in giving the sense of the gnome thus : 
Qui postremi ad Messiam se adplicuerunt, primis accensebuntur, et qui primi eum 
secuti sunt, postremis : — but this is doing evident violence to the words. 

§ So Maldonatus : Finis parabolae est mercedem vitae aetemae non tempori quo 
quis laboravit, sed labori et operi quod fecit respondere ; and Kuinoel the same. 

|| Non alio Dominum spectasse quam ut suos ad pergendum continuis stimulis 
mcitaret. Scimus enim segnitiem fere ex nimia fiducia nasci. If Ave found, i-ideed, 
the gnome by itself, we might then say that such was his purpose in it ; see the 
admirable use which Chrysostom (In Matth., Hum. 67, ad finem) makes of it, in 
this regard. 



UO THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

tration), like the hare in the fable, growing careless and remiss in our 
exertions, we allow others to outrun us : and so having seemed the first, 
fall into the hindmost rank, — that it conveys a warning that no one be* 
gin to boast, or consider the battle won, till he put off his armor. But 
neither will this agree with the circumstances of the parable, since the 
laborers who were first engaged are not accused of having grown slack 
in labor during the latter part of the day. 

There are others who make — not the penny equal to all, but the suc- 
cessive hours at which the different bands of laborers were hired, the 
most' prominent circumstance of the parable. And these interpreters 
may be again subdivided, for there are first those who, as Origen and 
Hilary, make it to contain a history of the different summonses to a 
work of righteousness, which God has made to men from the beginning of 
the world, — to Adam, — to Noah, — to Abraham, — to Moses, — and lastly to 
the apostles, bidding them each, in his order, to go work in his vineyard. 
Of these, all the earlier lived during weaker and more imperfect dispen- 
sations, and underwent, therefore, a harder labor, in that they had not 
such abundant gifts of the Spirit, such clear knowledge of the grace of 
God in Christ, to sustain them, as the later called, the members of the 
Christian Church. Their heavier toil, therefore, might aptly be set forth 
by a longer period of work, and that at the more oppressive time of the 
day (compare Acts xv. 10); while the apostles, and the rest of the 
faithful who were called into 'God's vineyard at the eleventh hour (the 
last time, or the last hour, as St. John [1 Ep. ii. 18] calls the Christian 
dispensation), and were made partakers of the larger, freer grace that 
was now given in Christ, had to endure little by comparison. But in 
regard to this explanation,* it may be asked, ivlven could that murmuring 
have taken place, even supposing the people of God could thus grudge 
because of the larger grace freely bestowed upon others 7 Those prior 
generations could not have so murmured in their lifetime, for before the 
things were even revealed which God had prepared for his people that 
came after, they were in their graves. Far less is it to be conceived as 

* "Were it the right one, John iv. 35-38 Avould afford a most interesting parallel ; 
for it is exactly this which is there declared. The "other men" that labored 
(ver. 38) are the generations that went before, doing their harder tasks under the 
Law, breaking up the fallow ground of men's hearts, and with toil and tears sowing 
their seed, — this would answer to the bearing here the burden and heat of the day. 
The blessedness of the disciples is there magnified, in that theirs is an easier task, 
the reaping and gathering in of the spiritual harvest ; they enter upon other men's 
labors ; — which is the counterpart to the coming into the vineyard at the eleventh 
hour. But the true feeling of the first laborers and of the last, of the hardest- 
tasked and the lightest, is there also declared, the only feeling which could find 
place in the kingdom of God, they "rejoice together" (ver 36), are unenvying 
partakers of the same joy. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 141 

finding place in the day of judgment, or in the kingdom of love made per- 
fect. Unless, then, we quite explain away the murmuring, and say with 
Chrysostom, that the Lord only introduced it to magnify the greatness 
of the things freely given to his disciples, which he would thus imply 
were so great and glorious, that those who lived before they were imparted 
might be provoked to murmur at the comparison of themselves with their 
more richly endowed successors, were it possible to imagine that such a 
feeling of envy could be entertained in their heart, — unless we accept 
this ingenious solution of the difficulty, this explanation of the parable 
seems almost untenable, as, were it worth while, much more might be 
brought against it.-^-Then there are, secondly, they who, in the different 
hours at which the laborers are hired, see the different periods of men's 
lives, at which they enter on the work of the Lord ; and who affirm that 
the purpose is to encourage those who have entered late on his service, 
now to labor heartily, not allowing the consciousness of past negligences 
to dispirit them, since they too, if only they will labor with their might 
for the time, long or short, which remains, shall receive a full reward 
with the rest. This is, in the main, Chrysostom's view;* but while, 
under certain limitations, such encouragement may undoubtedly be 
drawn from the parable, it is another thing to say that this is the admo- 
nishment which it is especially meant to convey. If that were the inter- 
pretation, in what living connection would the parable stand with what 
went before, with Peter's question which occasioned it, or with the spirit 
out of which that question grew, and which this teaching of the Lord 
was meant to meet and to correct ? 

But the explanation which is very frequently offered, and which 
certainly contains more truth in it than all which have hitherto been 
passed under review, is that which makes the parable a warning and a 
prophecy, of the causes which would lead to the rejection of the Jews, 
the first called into the vineyard of the Lord; — these causes being 
mainly their proud appreciation of themselves and of their own work ; 
their dislike at seeing the Gentiles, so long aliens from the common- 
wealth of Israel, put on the same footing, admitted at once to equal 
privileges with themselves in the kingdom of God : — and an agreement 
or covenant being made with the first hired, and none with those subse- 
quently engaged, has seemed a confirmation of this view. Doubtless 
this application of the parable is by no means to be excluded. It was 

* And also Jerome's (Comm. in Matth.) : Mihi videntur priniae horae esse ope- 
rarii Samuel et Jeremias et Baptista Johannes, qui possunt cum Psalmista dicere, 
Ex utero matris meae Deus es tu. Tertiae vero horse operarii sunt qui in pubertate 
servire Deo casperunt. Sextae horae, qui matura aetate si/sceperunt jugum Christi : 
nonae, qui jam declinant ad senium : porro undecimae, qi.i ultima senectute. Et 
tamen omnes pariter accipiunt praemium, licet diversus labor sit. 



142 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

notably fulfilled in the Jews ; their conduct did supply a solemn con* 
firmation of the need of the warning here given : but its application is 
universal and not particular ; this fulfilment was only one out of many: 
for our Lord's words are so rich in meaning, so bring out the essential 
and permanent relations between man and Grod, that they are continually 
finding their fulfilment. Had this however been the meaning which oui 
Lord had exclusively, or even primarily, in his eye, we should expect to 
hear of but two bands of laborers, the first hired and the last : all those 
who come between would only serve to confuse and perplex the image. 
The 'solution sometimes given of this objection, — that the successive 
hirings are the successive summonses to the Jews ; first, under Moses 
and Aaron ; secondly, under David and the kings ; thirdly, under the 
Maccabsean chiefs and priests ; and lastly, in the time of Ohrist and his 
apostles; or that these are Jews, Samaritans, and proselytes of greater or 
less strictness, — seems devised merely to escape from an embarrassment, 
and only witnesses for its existence without removing it. # 

Better then to say that the parable is directed against a wrong 
temper, and spirit of mind, which indeed was notably manifested in the 
Jews, but which not merely they, but all men in possession of spiritual 
privileges, have need to be, and are here, warned against : while at the 
same time the immediate occasion from which the parable rose, was not 
one in which they were involved. This is clear, for the warning was not 
primarily addressed to them, but to the apostles, as the chiefest and 
foremost in the Christian Church, the earliest called to labor in the 
Lord's vineyard — " the first" both in time, and in the amount of suffer- 
ing and toil which they would have to undergo. They had seen the rich 
young man (xix. 22) go sorrowful away, unable to abide the proof by 
which the Lord had mercifully revealed to him how strongly he was yet 
holden to the world and the things of the world. They (for Peter here, 
as in so many other instances, is the representative and spokesman of 
all) would fain know what their reward should be, who had done this 
very thing from which he had shrunk, and had forsaken all for the 
Gospel's sake. (ver. 27.) The Lord answers them first and fully, that 
they and as many as should do the same for his sake, should reap an 
abundant reward, (ver. 28, 29.) At the same time the question itself, 
"What shall we have?" was not a right one; it was putting their relation 
to their Lord on a wrong footing ; there was a tendency in the question 
to bring their obedience to a calculation of so much work, so much 
reward. There was also a certain self-complacency lurking in this 



* This explanation of the parable, however, is maintained by, and satisfies, 
Grotius : and also by Mr. Greswell {Exp. of the Par., v, 4, p. 370, seq.) who hai 
done for it every thing whereof it is capable, to win acceptance for it. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 143 

speech, not so much a vain confidence in themselves, considered by 
themselves, as a comparison for self-exaltation with others — a compa- 
rison between themselves who had not shrunk back from the command 
to forsake all, and the young man who had found the requirement too 
hard for him. That spirit of self-exalting comparison of ourselves with 
others, which is so likely to be stirring when we behold any signal 
failure on their part, was at work in them ; and the very answer which 
the Lord gave to their question would have been as fuel to the fire, 
unless it had been accompanied with the warning of the parable. It is 
true that this self-complacent thought was probably only as an under- 
thought in Peter's mind, obscurely working within him, one of which he 
was himself hardly conscious ; but the Lord, who knew what was in man, 
saw with a glance into the depths of his heart, and having given an 
answer to the direct question, went on by this further teaching, to nip 
at once the evil sprout in the bud before it should proceed to develope 
itself further. " Not of works, lest any man should boast ;" this was the 
truth which they were in danger of losing sight of, and which he would 
now by the parable enforce ; and if nothing of works, but all of grace 
for all, then no glorying of one over another could find place, no grudg- 
ing of one against another, no claim as of right upon the part of any. 

First indeed the Lord answered the question, " What shall we 
have?" As they in deed and in sincerity had forsaken all for Christ's 
sake, and desired to know what their reward should be, he docs not 
think it good to withhold the. reply, but answers them fully, — the 
reward shall be great. But having answered so, his discourse takes 
another turn,* as is sufficiently indicated in the words, lt Bat many that 
are first shall be last ;" and he will warn them now against giving place 
to<r much to that spirit out of which the question proceeded : for there 



* Gerhard : Sub finem, quia Christo Petri et reliquorum confidentia non fuit 
ignota, et verendum erat ne ob magnificam banc promissionem sese aliis prsefer- 
rent, bunc locum gravi sententia concludit, qua ipsos et in primis Petrum sub 
modestia et metu continere cupit, Multi autem primi erunt novissimi, et novissimi 
primi . . . Nolite ergo altum sapere, nolite arroganter de vobis ipsis sentire. So 
also Olsbausen, who refers to ver. 20-28 of tbis chapter (cf. Mark x. 35), as an evi- 
dence bow -liable the promise (xix. 28) was to be perverted and misunderstood by 
the old man which was not yet wholly mortified in the apostles. But the whole 
matter has been strangely reversed by some, who instead of a warning and a cau- 
tion here, see rather in the parable a following up of what has been already spoken : 
— "You, the poor and despised, who might seem the last called, shall be first in 
the kingdom of God — while the first, the wise, the noble, and the rich, such. 
for instance, as that young man and all the spiritual chiefs of the nation, shall be 
last in the day of the Lord." But this would indeed have been fuel to a fire 
which rather needed slaking, and which it was the very purpose of the parable to 
slake. 



144 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

was therein a pluming of themselves upon their own work, an invidious 
comparison of themselves with others, a certain attempt to bring in God 
as their debtor. In short, the spirit of the hireling spoke in that 
question, and it is against this spirit that the.parable is directed, which 
might justly be entitled, On the nature of rewards in the kingdom of 
God, — the whole finding a most instructive commentary in Rom. iv. 1-4, 
which passage supplies a parallel not indeed verbal, but a more deeply 
interesting, that is, a real parallel with the present. 

As far as it is addressed to Peter, and in him to all true believers, 
the parable is rather a warning against what might be, if they were not 
careful to watch against it, than a prophecy of what would be.* For we 
cannot imagine him who dwells in love as allowing himself in envious 
and grudging thoughts against any of his brethren, because, though they 
have entered later on the service of God, or been engaged on a lighter 
labor, they will yet be sharers with him of the same heavenly reward, — 
or refusing to welcome them gladly to all the blessings and privileges of 
the communion of Christ. Least of all can we imagine him so to forget 
that he also is saved by grace, as to allow such hateful feelings to come to 
a head, actually to take form and shape, which they do in the parable, — 
as justifying them to himself or to God, like the spokesman among the 
murmurers here. We cannot conceive this even here in our present 
imperfect state, and much less in the perfected kingdom hereafter ; for 
love "rejoices in- the truth,"! and the very fact of one so grudging 
against another would prove that he himself did not dwell in love, and 
therefore was himself under sentence of exclusion from that kingdom.} 
It is then a warning to the apostles, and through them to all believers, 
of what might be, — not a prophecy of what shall be with any that share 
in the final reward; — a solemn warning that however long continued 
their work, abundant their labors, yet if they had not this charity to 
their brethren, this humility before God, they were nothing; — that 
pride and a self-complacent estimation of their work, like the fly in the 
ointment, would spoil the work, however great it might be, since that 
work stands only in humility ; and from first they would fall to last. — 

* Bengel : Respectu Apostolorum non est prsedictio sed admonitia. ' 
■f In the beautiful words of Leighton {Prcdect. 6.) : 'O cp&6i/os e£w rod 3-etou x<$- 
pov sed caritas absolutissima, qua, unusquisque simul cum sua. alterius niutud feli- 
citate fruitur et beatus est ilia scillicet tanquam sua collaetatus ; unde inter illos 
infinita quaedam beatitudinis repercussio et multiplicatio est ; qualis foret splendor 
aulae auro et gemmis, pleno regum et magnatum choro, nitentis, cujus parietes spe- 
culis undique lucidissimis obtecti essent. 

$ Gregory the Great says excellently (Horn. 19, in EvangS) on this murmur- 
ing : Ccelorum regnum nullus murmurans accipit : nullus qui accipit, murmurare 
poterit. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 145 

There is then this difference "between the narration in the parable, and 
the truth of which it is the exponent, that while it would not have been 
consistent with equity for the householder altogether to have deprived 
the first laborers of their hire, notwithstanding their pride and their 
discontent, so that consequently they receive their wages, and are not 
punished with more than a severe rebuke, yet the lesson to be taught to 
Peter, and through him to all disciples in all times, is, that the first may 
be altogether last, that those who seem chiefest in labor, yet, if they 
forget withal that the reward is of grace and not of works, and begin to 
boast and exalt themselves above their fellow-laborers, may altogether 
lose the things which they have wrought:* and those who seem last, 
may yet, by keeping their humility, be acknowledged first in the day of 
God : — and in proof of this, the parable which follows was spoken. 

It commences thus : " The kingdom of heaven is like unto a <~ian 
that is a house! bolder, which ivent out early in the morning to hire 
laborers into his vineyard:' 1 '' in other words, The manner of God's 
dealings with those whom he calls to the privileges of working in his 
Church. — that is, his kingdom in its present imperfect development, — is 
similar to that of a householder, who went early in the morning to hire 
laborers.f This is ever true in the heavenly world, that God seeks his 
laborers, and not they him ; " You have not chosen me, but I have^ 
chosen you." (John xv. 16.) Every summons to a work in the heavenly 
vineyard is from the Lord : man's heart never originates the impulse ; 
all which is man's in the matter is, that he do not resist the summons, 
which it is his melancholy prerogative that he is able to do. It is 
" a call," according to the instructive Scriptural expression : but as in 
the natural world a call implies no force, but is something which may be. 
obeyed or refused, so also is it in the spiritual. 

The householder agreed with the first laborers for a penny a day.J 



* Gregory the Great again {Moral., 1. 19, c. 21) : Perit omne quod agitur, si' 
non sollicite in liumilitate custoditur. 

f Fleck : Non in una persona sed in tota actione collatio consistit ; — a remark 
of frequent application. 

X A denarius, a Roman silver coin, which passed current as equal to the Greek 
drachm, though in fact some few grains lighter. It was =8^d., at the latter end 
of the commonwealth ; afterwards, something less, of our money. It was not an 
uncommon, though a liberal day's pay. (See Tob. v. 14.) Morier, in his Second 
Journey through Persia, p. 265, mentions having noted in the market-place at Ha- 
madan a custom like that alluded to in the parable: — " Here we observed every 
morning before the sun rose, that a numerous band of peasants were collected with 
spades in their hands, waiting to be hired for the day to work in the surrounding 
fields. This custom struck me as a most happy illustration of our Saviour's para- 
ble, particularly when, passing by the same place late in the day, we found others 
standing idle, and remembered his words. ' "Why stand ye here all the day idle V 
10 



146 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD 

The different terms upon which the different "bands of laborers went to 
their work, would scarcely have been so expressly noted, unless stress 
were to be laid on it. An agreement was made by these first-hired labor- 
ers before they entered on their labor, exactly the agreement which 
Peter wished to make, "What shall we have?" — while those subse- 
quently engaged went in a simpler spirit, trusting that whatever was 
right and equitable the householder would give them. Thus we have 
here upon the one side early indications of that wrong spirit which pre- 
sently comes to a head (ver. 11, 12); on the other side, we have the 
true spirit of humble waiting upon the Lord, in full assurance that he 
will give far more than we can desire or deserve, — that God is not un- 
righteous to forget any labor of love, — that his servants can safely trust 
in him, who is an abundant rewarder of all them that seek and that serve 
him.* 

At_ the third, at the sixth, and at the ninth hour, — at nine in the 
morning, at mid-day, and at three in the afternoon,f he again went into 
the market-place,;}; and those whom he found there disengaged, sent into 
his vineyard. — " And about the eleventh hour he ivent out and found 
others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye Jiere all the day 
idle?" All activity out of Christ, all labor that is not labor in his 
Church, is in his sight a standing idle. " They say unto him, Because 
no man hath hired us." There was a certain amount of rebuke in the 
question, which it is intended that this answer shall clear away ; for it 
belongs to the idea of the parable, that it shall be accepted as perfectly 
satisfactory. It is not then in a Christian land, where men grow up 
under sacramental obligations, with the pure word of God sounding in 

as most applicable to their situation, for on putting the very same question to them 
:they answered us, ' Because no man hath hired us.'" 

* Thus Bernard, in a passage (In Cant., Serm. 14, 4) containing many interest- 
ing allusions to this parable : Hie [ Judaeus] pacto conventionis, ego placito volunta- 
tis innitor. 

•f These would not, except just at the equinoxes, be exactly the hours, for the 
Jews, as well as the Greeks and Romans, divided the natural day, that between 
sunrise and sunset, into twelve equal parts, (John xi. 9,) which parts must of 
course have been considerably longer in summer than in winter ; for though the 
difference between the longest and the shortest day is not so great in Palestine, as 
with us, yet is it by no means trifling ; the longest day is of 14 h 12 m duration, the 
shortest of 9 h 48™, with a difference therefore of 4 k 24 m , so that an hour on tho 
longest day would be exactly 22 m longer than an hour on the shortest. The equi- 
noctial hours did not come into use until the fourth century. (See the Diet, of Or. 
and Bom. Antt., s. v. Hora, p. 485.) Probably the day was also divided into four 
larger parts here indicated, just as the Roman night into four watches, and indeed 
the Jewish no less : the four divisions of the latter are given in a popular form, 
Mark xiii. 35. (See Schoettgen's Hot. Hcb., f. 1, p. 136.) 

X Maldonatus : Totum mundum qui extra Ecclesiam est. 



THE LABORERS IX THE VINEYARD, 147 

their ears, that this answer could be given — or at least, only in such 
woful cases as that which our own land now presents, where in the 
bosom of the Church multitudes have been allowed to grow up ignorant 
of the blessing which her .communion affords, and the responsibilities it 
lavs upon them ; — and even in their mouths there would only be a par- 
tial truth in the answer, " No man hath hired us ;" since even they can- 
not be altogether ignorant of their Christian vocation. It would only be 
when the kingdom of God is first set up in a land, enters as a new and 
hitherto unknown power, that sinful men with full truth could answer. 
u No man hath hired us, — if we have been living in disobedience to God, 
it has been because we were ignorant of him, — if we were serving Satan, 
it was because we knew no other master, because we knew not that there 
was such a thing as living for God and for his glory, and bringing forth 
fruit to the honor of his name." 

Yet while thus the excuse which the laborers in the parable plead, 
appertains not to them who, growing up within the Church, have de- 
spised to the last, or nearly to the last, God's repeated biddings to go 
work in his vineyard — while the unscriptural corollary cannot be ap- 
pended to the parable,* that it matters little at what time of men's lives 
they enter heartily upon the service of God, how long they despise his 
vows and obligations which have been upon them from the beginning : 
yet one would not deny that there is such a thing even in the Christian 
Churcn as men being called, — or to speak more correctly, since they 
were called long before, — as men obeying the calling and entering on 

* The author of a modern Latin essay, De Sera Resipiscentia, anxious to rescue 
this part of the parable from the dangerous abuse to which it is often subjected, 
observes that it should have been otherwise constructed, if such a doctrine were to 
be drawn from it : Oportuisset dixisse regnum ccelorum simile est homini egresso 
alto mane, ad conducendum operarios in vineam suam. Invenit tales quibus fecit 
maxima promissa, sed isti base rejecerunt, praeferentes manere in foro ad ludendum 
et compotandum. Revcrsus est hora tertia. eadem illis obtulit, et instantius eos 
rogavit, sed absque fructu . . . Idem fecit hora sexta et noni, ipsius autem obla- 
tiones et promissiones semper fuerunt in utiles. Illi quin etiam ipsum male exce- 
perunt. ipsique protervfc dixerunt, quod nollent pro eo laborare. Ipse ne sic quidem 
offensus, reversus est, cum non nisi una diei hora superesset, eandemque obtulit 
summam quam mane. Illi time videntes quod summam tantam lucrari possent 
labore momentaneo. tandem passi sunt hoc sibi persuaderi, spectantes maxime quod 
dies ferfe transactus foret ante suum in vineam adventum. Augustine (Serm. 87. c. 
6) has the same line of thought : Numquid enim et illi, qui sunt ad vineam con- 
ducti, quando ad illos exibat paterfamilias, ut conduceret quos invenit hora tertia 
. . . dixerunt illi ; Exspecta, non illuc imus nisi hora sexta 1 aut quos invenit hora 
sexta dixerunt ; Non imus nisi hora nona . . . Omnibus enim tantumdem daturas 
est : quare nos amplius fatigamur 1 Quid ille daturus sit et quid facturus sit, penes 
ipsum consilium est. Tu quando vocaris, veni. Compare Gregory Nazanzl, Oral. 
40, c. 20, against those who used this parable as an argument for deferring their 
baptism. 



148 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

God's service, at the third, or sixth, or ninth, or even the eleventh hom 
Only the case of such will be parallel not to that of any of these labor 
ers, at least in regard of being able to make the same excuse as they 
did, but rather to that of the son, who being bidden to go work in hia 
father's vineyard, refused, but afterwards repented and went (Matt. xxi. 
28) ; and such a one, instead of excusing and clearing himself as re- 
spects the past, which these laborers do, will on the contrary have deep 
repentance in his heart, while he considers all his neglected opportunities 
and the long-continued despite which he has done to the Spirit of grace. 
Yet while thus none can plead, " No man hath hired us" in a land where 
the Christian faith has long been established, and the knowledge of it 
brought home unto all men, the parable is not therefore without its ap- 
plication in such ; — since there will be there also many entering into the 
Lord's vineyard at different periods, even to a late one, of their lives, 
and who, truly repenting their past unprofitableness, and not attempt- 
ing to excuse it, may find their work, be it for a long or a short while, 
graciously accepted now, and may share hereafter in the full rewards of 
the kingdom. 

For in truth time belongs not to the kingdom of God. Not " How 
much hast thou done ?" but " What art thou now ?" will be the great 
question of the last day. Of course we must never forget that all which 
men have clone will greatly affect what they are; yet still the parable is 
a protest against the whole quantitative appreciation of men's' works 
(the Romanist), as distinct from the qualitative, against all which would 
make the works the end and man the means, instead of the man the end, 
and the works the means — against that scheme which, however uncon- 
sciously, lies at the root of so many of the confusions in our theology at 
this day.* 

* This mechanical as opposed to the dynamic idea of righteousness, is carried 
to the greatest perfection of all in the Chinese theology. Thus in that remarkable 
Livre des recompenses et des peines, the mechanic, or to speak more truly, the arith- 
metic idea of righteousness, comes out with all possible distinctness. For exam- 
ple, p. 124 : Pour deVenir immortel, il faut avoir amasse" trois mille merites, et huit 
cent actions vertueuses. How glorious, on the other hand, are Thauler's words 
upon the way in which we may have restored to us " the years which the canker- 
worm has eaten" (Joel ii. 25) : Libet hie quajrere quo pacto deperditum tempus 
unquam recuperarc quis possit, cum nullum sit tarn breve et velox temporis mo- 
mentum, quod non totum cum omni virtute ac facilitate nostra Deo creatori debea- 
mus. Scd hac in parte consilium sanissimum prcestatur. Avertat se quisque cum 
omnibus tarn supremis quum infimis viribus suis ab omni loco et tempore, seque in 
illud Nunc seternitatis recipiat, ubi Deus essentialiter in stabili quodam Nunc 
cxistit. Ibi ncque prretcritum aliquid est, neque futurum. Ibi principium et finis 
universi temporis praesentia adsunt. Ibi, in Deo scilicet, deperdita omnia repcriun- 
tur. Et qui in consuetudinem ducunt saepius in Deum se immergere atque in ipso 
sommorari, hi nimium fiunt locupletes, immo plura inveniunt qu&m deperdere 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. U9 

u So token even teas come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his stew- 
ard. Call the laborers, and give t/ie?n t/ieir hire, beginning from the last 
unto the first." In bidding his steward to pay his laborers the same 
evening, he acted consistently with the merciful command of the law 
which enjoined concerning the hired servant, '• At his day thou shalt 
give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor, 
and setteth his heart upon it." (Deut. xxiv. 15. See Lev. xix. 13 ; 
Job. vii. 2 ; Mai. iii. 5 ; Jam. v. 4; Tob. iv. 14.) Christ is the steward, 
or the overseer rather, set over all God's house. (Heb. iii. 6 ; John v. 
27 ; Matt. xi. 27.) The whole economy of salvation has been put into 
his hands, and in this, of course, the distribution of rewards. In obe- 
dience to the householder's commands the laborers are called together ; 
the last hired, those who came in without any agreement made, receive a 
full penny. Here is encouragement for those that have delayed to en- 
ter on God's service till late in their lives — not encouragement to delay, 
for we every where find in Scripture a blessing resting on early piety — 
but encouragement now to work heartily, and with their might. It is a 
great mistake to think that misgivings concerning the acceptance of 
their work will make men work the more strenuously ; on the contrary, 
nothing so effectually cuts the nerves of all exertion ; but there is that 
in this part of the parable which may help to remove such misgivings 
in those who would be most likely to feel them : it encourages them to 
labor in hope ; they too shall be sharers in the full blessings of Christ 
and of his salvation. 

It may be securely inferred, that all between the last and the first 
hired received the penny as well ; though it is the case of the first hired 
alone which is brought forward, as that in which the injustice, as the 
others conceived it, appeared the most striking. To assume, as so many 
have done, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Hammond, Waterland, and of late 
Olshausen, that these first hired had been doing their work negligently 
by comparison, while the last hired, such for instance -as a Paul, whom 
Origen in this view, and quoting 1 Cor. xv. 10, suggests, had done it 
with their might, and had in fact accomplished as much in their hour as 
the others in their day, is to assume that of which there is not the slight- 
est trace in the narrative. And more than this, such an assumption 
effectually blunts the point of the parable, which lies in this very thing, 
that men may do and suffer much, infinitely more than others, and yet 
be rejected, while those others are received, — that the first may be last 
and the last first. It is not indeed strange that a Rationalist interpreter 
like Kuinoel should thus explain it ; for in fact the whole matter is thua 

queant . . . Denique et neglecta omnia atque deperdita in ipso quoque Doininicaa 
passionis preciosissimo thesauro reperire ac recuperare licet. 



150 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

taken out of the spiritual world, and brought down to the commonest 
region of sense ; since if one man does as much work in one hour aa 
another in twelve, it is only natural that he should receive an equal re- 
ward. Every difficulty disappears, — except indeed this, how the Lord 
should have thought it worth his while to utter a parable for the justify- 
ing so very ordinary a transaction ; or if he did, should have omitted to 
state that very thiDg which formed the justification. But in truth this 
yiew exactly brings us back to the level, from which to raise us the 
parable was expressly spoken — we have a Jewish,* instead of an evan- 
gelical, parable, an affirmation that the reward is not of grace but of 
debt, — the very untruth which it is meant to gainsay. 

When those first hired received the same sum as the others and no 
more, " they murmured against the good man of the house, saying, These 
last have ivrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, 
which have borne the burden and lieat] of the dayP These other, they 

* Singularly enough, exactly such a one is quoted by Lightfoot and others from 
the Talmud ; it is concerning a celebrated Rabbi, who died at a very early age, and 
is as follows : " To what was R. Bon Bar Chaija like 1 To a king who hired many 
laborers, among whom there was one hired, who performed his task extraordinarily 
well. What did the king 1 He took him aside and walked with him to and fro 
When even was come, those laborers came, that they might receive their hire, and 
he gave him a complete hire with the rest. And the laborers murmured, say- 
ing, ' "We have labored hard all the day, and this man only two hours, yet he hath 
received as much wages as we.' The king said to them, ' He hath labored more in 
those two hours, than you in the whole day.' So R. Bon plied the law more in 
eight and twenty years than another in a hundred years." This parable appears 
in the Spicilegium of L. Capellus, p. 28, in an altered shape. — Von Hammer {Fund- 
gruben d. Orients, v. 1, p. 157) has a curious extract from the Sura, or collection of 
Mahomet's traditional sayings, which looks like a distorted image of our parable. 
The Jew, the Christian, the Mahommedan are likened to three different bands of 
laborers, hired at different periods of the day, at morning, at mid-day, and afternoon. 
The latest hired received in tb'3 evening twice as much as the others. It ends thus : 
" The Jews and Christians will complain and say, ' Lord, thou hast given two carets 
to these and only one to us.' But the Lord will say, ' Have I wronged you in your 
reward V They answer, ' No.' ' Then learn that the other is an overflowing of my 
grace.' " See the same with immaterial differences in Gerock's Christol. d. Koran, 
p. 141 ; and Mohler ( Verm. Schrift., v. 1, p. 355) mentions that when seeking foi 
prophetic intimations of their faith in our Scriptures, they make distinct reference 
to this parable, and its successive bands of laborers. — Mr. Greswell quotes a re- 
markable passage from Josephus (Antt. Jud., 20. 9. 7), which proves that such a 
dealing as that of the householder, was not without a very remarkable precedent 
in those very days. The Jewish historian expressly says, that Ananus (the Annas 
of the New Testament) paid the workmen who were employed in the rebuilding or 
beautifying of the temple a whole day's pay, even though they should have labored but 
a tingle hour. 

-j- The Kaurcou, which word is used in the LXX. for the dry burning east wind 
bo fatal to all vegetable life : " the wind from the wilderness" (Hos. xiii. 15), of 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 151 

would say, have been laboring not merely a far shorter time, but when 
they entered on their tasks it was already the cool of the evening, when 
toil is no longer oppressive, while we have borne the scorching heat of 
the middle noon. But here the perplexing dilemma meets us, Either 
these are of the number of God's faithful people, — how then can they 
murmur against him, and grudge against their fellow-servants ? or they 
are not of that number, — what then can we understand of their having 
labored the whole day through in his vineyard, and actually carrying 
away at last the penny, the reward of eternal life ? — for it is a very un- 
natural way of escaping the difficulty, to understand " Take that which 
is thine" as meaning, — Take the damnation which belongs to thee, and 
is the just punishment of thy pride and discontent. Theophylact and 
others strive to mitigate as much as possible the guilt of their murmur- 
ing, and make it nothing more than the expression of surprise and ad- 
miration* which will escape some, at the unexpected position which 
others, of perhaps small account here, will occupy in the future king- 
dom of glory. f But the expression of their discontent is too strong, and 
the rebuke which it calls out too severe, to allow of any such explaining 
of their dissatisfaction. Better to say that there is no analogy to be 
found for this murmuring in the future world of glory — and only where 
there is a great admixture of the old man in the present world of grace. 
There is here rather a teaching by contraries ; it is saying, Since you 
cannot conceive such a spirit as that here held up before you, and which 
you feel to be so sinful and hateful, finding place in the perfected king- 
dom of God, check betimes its beginnings — check all inclinations to look 
grudgingly at your brethren who, having in times past grievously de- 
parted from God, have now found a place beside yourselves in his king- 
dom, and are sharers in the same spiritual privileges.^ or to look down 

which Jerome says {Com. in Os., 1. 3, c. 11) : Kavcrwva, i. e. ariditatem, sive ventum 
urenteta, qui contrarius floribus est, et germinantia cuncta disperdit. It has much 
in common with, t hough it has not altogether so malignant a character as, the de- 
sert wind Sam or Samiel, to which modern travellers attribute yet more destruc- 
tive effects, speaking of it as at times fatal to the life of man ; and whose effects 
Venema (Comm. in Ps. xci. 6) thus describes: Penetrat ventus, venenatis particu- 
lis mixtus, aestu suo venenato in viscera, et prcesentissimum ac dolorificum adfert 
exitium. Subito corpora fajde afficiuntur ac putrescunt, See also Gebser, Der 
Brief des Jakobus, p. 41. 

* Bellarmine : Admirationem potius quamquerimoniam significare videtur. 

f The explanation given by Gregory the Great (Horn. 19, in Evang.) is of the 
same kind, though with particular reference to the Saints and Patriarchs of the 
Old Testament : Quia antiqui patres usque ad adventum Domini ducti ad regnum 
non sunt, . . . hoc ipsum murmurasse est ; quod et recte pro percipiendo regno vix- 
erunt, et tamen diu ad percipiendum regnum dilati sunt. Origen in the same spirit 
quotes Heb. xi. 39, 40. 

X There are many and interesting points of comparison, as Jerome observes, be- 



152 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

upon and despise those who occupy a less important field of labor, who 
are called in the providence of God to endure and suffer less than your' 
selves ; check all inclinations to pride yourselves on your own doings, 
as though they gave you a claim of right upon God, instead of accept 
ing all of the free mercy and undeserved bounty of God, and confessing 
that you as well as others must be saved entirely by grace. 

With regard to the murmurers actually receiving their penny, it ia 
ingeniously remarked by a Romish expositor,, that the denarius or penny 
was of different kinds ; there was the double, the treble, the fourfold ; 
that ,of brass or rather copper, of silver, and of gold. The Jew (for he 
applies the parable to Jew and Gentile) received what was his, his 
penny of the meaner metal, his earthly reward, and with that went his 
way ; but the Gentile the golden penny, the spiritual reward, grace and 
glory, admission into the presence of God. Ingenious as this notion is, 
of course no one will for an instant accept it as a fair explanation of the 
difficulty, and yet it may suggest valuable considerations. The penny 
is very different to the different receivers — though objectively the same, 
subjectively is very different ; it is in fact to every one exactly what he 
will make it.* What the Lord said to Abraham, he says unto all, " I 
am thy exceeding great reward," and he has no other reward to impart 
to any save only this, namely himself. To see him as he is, this is the 



tween this parable and that of the Prodigal Son ; and chiefly between the murmur- 
ing laborers in this, and the elder brother in that. They had borne the burden 
and heat of the day — he had served his father these many years : they grudged to 
see the laborers of the eleventh hour made equal with themselves — he to see tha 
Prodigal received into the full blessings of his father's house ; the lord of the vine- 
yard remonstrates with them for their narrow-heartedness, and in like manner the 
father with him. 

* Thus Aquinas, in answer to the question whether there will be degrees of 
glory in the future world, replies that in one sense there will, in another there will 
not ; for, he adds, Contingit aliquem perfectius frui Deo quam aliuin ex eo quod 
est melius dispositus vel ordinatus ad ejus fruitionem ; — and again ; Virtus erit 
quasi materialis dispositio ad mensuram gratiae et glorias suscipiendse. This is one 
vision of God ; but there are very different capacities for enjoying that vision, as is 
profoundly expressed in Dante's Paradiso, by the circles concentric, but ever grow- 
ing smaller and thus nearer to the centre of light and life. Augustine {Enarr. in 
Ps. lxxii. 1) carries yet further the view of the one vision of God for all : he com- 
pares it to the light which gladdens the healthy eye but torments the diseased (non 
mutatis sed mutatum). It was also a favorite notion with the mystics that God 
would not put forth a twofold power to punish and reward, but the same power 
acting differently on different natures, — as, to use their own illustration, the same 
heat hardens the clay and softens the wax. The Zend-Avesta supplies a parallel : 
All, it is there said, in the world to come, will have to pass through the same 
stream ; but this stream will be as warm milk to the righteous, while to the wicked 
it will y>e as molten brass. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 153 

reward which he has for all his people, the penny unto all ; but they 
whom these murmuring laborers represent, had been laboring for 
something else besides the knowledge and enjoyment of God, with an 
eye to some other reward, to something on account of which they could 
glory in themselves and glory over others. It was not merely to have 
much which they desire, but to have more than others, — not to grow 
together with the whole body of Christ, but to get before and beyond 
their brethren* — and the penny then, because it was common to all, 
did not seem enough — while in fact it was to each what he would 
make it. For if the vision of God constitute the blessedness of the 
future world, then they whose spiritual eye is most enlightened, will 
drink in most of his glory ; then, since only like can know like, all ad- 
vances which are here made in humility, in holiness, in love, are a pol- 
ishing of the mirror that it may reflect more distinctly the divine image, 
a purging of the eye that it may see more clearly the divine glory, an 
enlarging of the vessel that it may receive more amply of the divine 
fulness ; and, on the contrary, all pride, all self-righteousness, all sin of 
every kind, whether it stop short with impairing, or end by altogether 
destroying, the capacities for receiving from God, is in its degree a 
staining of the mirror, a darkening of the eye, a narrowing of the ves- 
sel.f In the present case, where pride and envy and self-esteem had 
found place, darkening the eye of the heart, as a consequence the re- 
ward seemed no reward, — it did not appear enough \\ instead of be- 
ing exactly what each, was willing, or rather had prepared himself to 
make it. 

" But he answered one of them" probably him who was loudest and 
foremost in the expression of his discontent, u and said, Friend,^ I do 

* The true feeling is expressed by Augustine : Haereditas in qua cohaeredes 
Christi sumus, non minuitur multitudine filiorum, nee fit angustius numerositate 
cohaaredum. Sed tanta est multis quanta paucis, tanta singulis quanta omnibus ; 
and in a sublime passage, De Lib. Arbit., 1. 2, c. 14, where of Truth, the heavenly 
bride, he exclaims : Omnes amatores suos nullo modo sibi invidos recipit, et omni- 
bus communis est et singulis casta est : and by Gregoiy, who says : Qui facibus 
invidiae carere desiderat, illam caritatem appetat, quam numerus possidentium non 
angustat. The same is beautifully expressed by Dante, Purged. 15, beginning : — 

Com' esser puote ch'un ben distribute) 

In piii posseditor, faccia piii ricchi 

Di se, che se da pochi e possedu'-o? 

' f Bellarmine (De ccter. Felic. Sanct., 1. 5): Denarius vitam aeternam significat: 
sed quemadmodum idem sol clarius conspicitur ab aquila quam ab aliis avibus, et 
idem ignis magis calefacit proximos quam remotos, sic in eadem seterna vita clarius 
vidabit, et jucundius gaudebit unus quam alius. 

^ As the heathen moralist had said : Nulli ad aliena respicienti, sua placent;— • 
and again : Non potest quisquam et inviderc et gratias agere. 

§ 'Ercupe : in the Vulgate, Amice : but Augustine (Serm. 87, c 3,) Sodalis, 



154 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

tJiee no wrong didst thou not agree with me for a penny V " Friend * 
is commonly a word of address, as it would be among ourselves, from a 
superior to an inferior, and in Scripture is a word of an evil omen, 
seeing that besides the present passage, it is the compellation used to tho 
guest that had not a wedding garment (Matt, xxi.), and to Judas when 
he came to betray his Master. — U I do tJiee no lorong ;" he justifies hia 
manner of dealing with them, as well as his sovereign right in his own 
things. They had put their claim on the footing of right, and on that 
footing they are answered ; — " Take that thine is, and go thy way ;" 
and again, "Is thine eye* evil because lam good? so long as I am just 
to you, may I not be goodf and liberal to them V 1 The solution of the 
difficulty that these complainers should get their reward and carry it 
away with them, has been already suggested, — namely that, according to 
the human relations, on which the parable is founded, and to which it 
must adapt itself, it would not have been consistent with equity to have 
made them forfeit their own hire, notwithstanding the bad feeling which 
they displayed. Yet we may say their reward vanished in their hands, 
and the sentences which follow sufficiently indicate, that with God an 
absolute forfeiture might follow, nay must necessarily follow, where this 
grudging, unloving, proud spirit has come to its full head ; for it is said 
immediately after, "So the last shall be first, and the first last." 

Many expositors have been sorely troubled how to bring these words 
into agreement with the parable ; for in it first and last seem all put 
upon the same footing, while here, in these words, a complete change of 
place is asserted ; — those who seemed highest, it is declared shall be 
placed at the lowest, and the lowest highest ; compare too Luke xiii. 30 f 
where there can be no doubt that a total rejection of the first, the un- 
believing Jews, accompanied with the receiving of the last, the Gentiles, 
into covenant, is declared. Origen, whom Maldonatus follows, finds an 
explanation of the difficulty in the fact that the last hired are the first 
in order of payment; but this is so trifling an advantage, that the 

which is better. Our " fellow," as now used, would contain too much of contempt 
in it, though else it would give the original with the greatest accuracy. 

* Envy is ever spoken of as finding its expression from the eye, Deut. xv. 9; 
1 Sam. xvii. 9 (" Saul eyed David ") ; Prov. xxiii. 6 ; xxviii. 22 ; Tob. iv. 7 ; Sirac 
xiv. 10; xxxi. 13 ; Mark vii. 22. There lies in the expression the belief, one of the 
widest spread in the world, of the eye being able to put forth positive powers of 
mischief. Thus in Greek the bcp^aX/u-Ss fSao-Kavos and fiacr naive iv=<p&ove?v ; in Italian, 
the mal-occhio; in French, the mauvais-oeil. Persius : Urentcs oculos. See 
Becker's Chariklcs, v. 2, p. 291. We have on the other hand the ayabhs o<pba\fx.6s, 
the ungrudging eye. (Sirac xxxii. 10 : LXX.) 

f The same opposition between aya&6s and SUaios finds place, Rom. v. 7, which 
indeed is only to be explained by keeping fast hold of the opposition between the 
arords. 



THE LABORERS IN THE VUSTEYARD. 155 

explanation must be rejected as quite unsatisfactory. The circumstance 
of the last hired being first paid is evidently introduced merely for the 
convenience of the narration ; if the first hired had been first paid, and, 
as was natural, had then gone their way, they would not have been 
present to see that the others had obtained the same remuneration as 
themselves, and so would have had no opportunity of expressing their 
discontent. Neander* finds the difficulty of reconciling the parable with 
the words which introduce and finish it so great, that he proposes a 
desperate remedy, and one under the frequent application of which we 
should lose all confidence in the trustworthiness, not to speak of the 
inspiration, of the Gospel narration. He thinks the sentences and the 
parable to have been spoken on different occasions, and only by accident 
to have been here brought into connection ; and asserts that one must 
wholly pervert this so weighty parable to bring it through forced artifices 
into harmony with words which are alien to it. But what has been 
observed above may furnish a sufficient answer ; if that be correct, the 
saying is not merely in its place here, but is absolutely necessary to 
complete the moral, to express that which the parable did not, and 
according to the order of human affairs, could not express, namely, the 
entre forfeiture which would follow on the indulgence of such a temper, 
as that displayed by the murmurers and complainers. 

There is more difficulty with the other words, "Many be called but 
few chosen "\ They are not difficult in themselves, but difficult on 
account of the position which they occupy : the connection is easy and 
the application obvious, when they occur as the moral of the Marriage 
of the King's Son, Matt. xxii. 14, but here they have much perplexed 
interpreters, such at least, as will not admit the entire rejection from 
the heavenly kingdom of those represented by the murmuring laborers. 
Some explain them, Many are called, but few have the peculiar favor 
shown to them, that though their labor is so much less, their reward 
should be equal : thus Olshausen, who makes the " called " and the 
" chosen " alike partakers of final salvation, but that by these terms are 
signified higher and lower standings of men in the kingdom of God. J 
These last hired had, in his view, labored more abundantly, but this 
their more abundant labor was to be referred to a divine election, so that 

* Lcben Jcsu, p. 196, note. 

f It is not often that there is so felicitous an equivalent proverb in another lan- 
guage as that which the Greek supplies here ; and which Clement of Alexandria 
has more than once adduced on the score of its aptness as a parallel : 
UuWoi roi i/apfrr]KO<p6poi, iravpoi 8e Te /3aK%oi. 

J Thus TTolf also (Cures, in loc.) : KAtjtous et e/cAe/cTous hie non tanquam specie 
eibi oppositos consideflmdos esse, sed tanquam oppositos gradu felicitatis atque 
dignitatis. 



156 THE LABORERS IN THE VINEYARD. 

the name "chosen" or elect becomes them well, to whom such especial 
grace was given. But this supposition of larger labor upon their part 
mars, as has been already noted, the whole parable, and is by no mean8 
to be admitted. Others have supposed that the u called " may refer to 
some not expressly mentioned in the parable, who had refused altogether 
to work in the vineyard, in comparison with whom the " chosen" those 
who at any hour had accepted the invitation, were so few, that the Lord 
could not bear that any of these should be shut out from his full reward. 
But the easiest interpretation seems to be, — Many are called to work in 
God's* vineyard, but few retain that temper of spirit, that humility, that 
entire submission to the righteousness of God, that utter denial of any 
claim as of right on their own part, which will allow them in the end to 
be partakers of his reward.* 

* The term, reward, as applied to the felicity which God will impart to his peo- 
ple, sometimes offends, while it seems to bring us back to a legal standing point, and 
to imply a claim as of right, not merely of grace, upon man's part ; but since it is a 
scriptural term (Matt. v. 12, vi. 1 ; Luke vi. 35 ; 2 John 8 ; Rev. xxii. 12), there is 
no reason why we should shrink from using it, even as we find our Church has not 
shrunk from its use. Thus in one of our Collects we pray " that we plenteously 
bringing forth the fruit of good works may of thee be plenteously rewarded" — and 
in the Baptismal Service, " everlastingly rewarded." Yet at the same time we 
should clearly understand what we mean by it. Aquinas says : Potest homo apud 
Deum aliquid mereri non quidem secundum absolutam justitias rationem, sed se- 
cundum divinse ordinationis quandam prsesuppositionem ; and this is a satisfactory 
distinction ; the reward has relation to the work, but this is, as the early protesters 
against the papal doctrine of merits expressed it, according to a justitia promissionis 
divinge, not a justitia retributionis. There is nothing of a meritum condignum, 
though Bellarmine sought to press this parable into service, in support of such. 
(See Gerhard's hoc. Theoll., loc. 18, c. 8, § 14.) "When it is said, " God is not un- 
righteous to forget your work and labor of love," it is only saying in other words, 
he is faithful (ovk &dLKos=irKrrhs). Compare 1 John i. 9 ; 1 Cor. x. 13 ; 1 Pet. iv. 
19. By free promise he makes himself a debtor : Augustine (Serm. 110, c. 4) : 
Non debendo sed promittendo debitorem se Deus fecit. In the reward there is a 
certain retrospect to the work done, but no proportion between them, except such 
as may have been established by the free appointment of the Giver, and the only 
claim which it justifies is upon his promise. " He is faithful that promised" — this 
and not any other thing must remain always the ground of all expectations and 
hopes : and what these expectations are to be, and what they are not to be, it is 
the main purpose of this parable to declare. Bernard declares excellently the spirit 
in which man ought to work, and in which God will accept the work, when he says: 
Vera caritas mercenaria non est. quamvis merces earn sequatur. 



X. 

THE TWO SONS. 

Matthew xxi. 28-32. 

Our Lord had put back with another question the question T*«th whick 
his adversaries had hoped either to silence him, if he should decline tt> 
answer, or to obtain matter of accusation against him, if he should give 
the answer which they expected; and now he becomes himself the 
assailing party, and commences that series of parables, in which, as in a 
glass held up before them, they might see themselves, the impurity of 
their hearts, their neglect of the charge laid upon them, their contempt 
of the privileges afforded them, the aggravated guilt of that outrage 
against himself which they were already meditating in their hearts. 
Yet even these, wearing as they do so severe and threatening an aspect, 
are not words of defiance, but of earnest, tenderest love, — spoken, if it 
were yet possible to turn them from their purpose, to save them from 
the fearful sin they were about to commit, to win tliem also for the 
kingdom of God. The first that of the Two Sons, goes not so deeply 
into the matter as the two that follow, and is rather retrospective, while 
those other are prophetic also. 

" But ivhat think ye ? — A certain man had two sons." Here, as at 
Luke xv. 11, are described, under the image of two sons of one father, 
two great moral divisions of men, under one or other of which might 
be ranged almost all with whom our blessed Lord in his teaching and 
preaching came in contact. Of one of these classes the Pharisees were 
specimens and representatives, — though this class as well as the other 
will exist at all times. In this are included all who have sought a right- 
eousness through the law, and by the help of it have been kept in the 
main from open outbreakings'of evil. In the second class, of which the 
publicans and harlots stand as representatives, are contained all who 



158 THE TWO SONS. 

have thrown off the yoke, openly and boldly transgressed the laws of 
God, done evil with both hands earnestly. Now the condition of those 
first is of course far preferable ; that righteousness of the law better t^ian 
this open unrighteousness; — provided always that it is ready to give 
place to the righteousness of faith when that appears, — provided that it 
knows and feels its own incompleteness ; and this will always be the case, 
where the attempt to keep the law has been truly and honestly made ; 
the law will then have done its work, and have proved a schoolmaster to 
Christ. But if this righteousness is satisfied with itself, — and this will 
be. where evasions have been sought out to escape the strictness of the re- 
quirements of the law ; if, cold and loveless and proud, it imagines that it 
wants nothing, and so refuses to submit itself to the righteousness of 
faith, then far better that the sinner should have had his eyes opened to 
perceive his misery and guilt, even though it had been by means of 
manifest and grievous transgressions, than that he should remain in this 
ignorance of his true state, of that which is lacking to him still ; just as 
it would be better that disease, if in tlie frame, should take a decided 
shape, so that it might be felt and acknowledged to be disease, and then 
met and overcome, — than that it should be secretly lurking in, and per- 
vading, the whole system, and because secretly, its very existence denied 
by him whose life it was threatening. From this point of view St. Paul 
speaks, Eom. vii. 7-9, and the same lesson is taught us in all Scripture 
— that there is no such fault as counting we have no fault. It is taught 
us in the bearing of the elder son towards his father and returning 
brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son ; and again, in the conduct of 
the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to his house, in his demeanor to him 
and to the woman " which was a sinner ;" and in his who went up into 
the temple to pray. (Luke xviii. 10. Compare v. 29-32.) 

" And he came to the first and said, Soil, go ivork to-day in my vine- 
yard" This command was the genera! summons made both by the nat- 
ural law in the conscience, and also by the revealed law which Moses 
gave, for men to bring forth fruit unto God. This call the publicans 
and harlots, and all open sinners, manifestly neglected and despised. 
The son first bidden to go to work, " answered and said, I will not. 1 '* 
The rudeness of the answer, the total absence of any attempt to excuse 
his disobedience, are both characteristic ; he does not take the trouble to 
say, like those invited guests, " I pray thee have me excused ; : ' but flat- 
ly refuses to go ; he is in short the representative of careless, reckless 
sinners. — And lie came to tlie second and said likewise, and lie answered 
and said, I go, sir."\ The Scribes and Pharisees, as professing to be 

* Gerhard : Vita peccatorum nihil aliud est, quam realis quidara clamor 3t pro- 
fession Nolumus facere Dei voluntatem. 

t 'Ey&>, Kvpie. The readings here are very various, pai nvpie, undyw Kvpie, and 



THE TWO SONS. 159 

zealous for the law, set themselves in the way as though they would ful- 
fil the commands ; this their profession was like the second son's prom- 
ised obedience. But, as the Lord on a later occasion lays to their 
charge, that they said and did not (Matt, xxiii. 2), even as he, quotes the 
prophet Isaiah as having long before described them truly (Matt. xv. 8), 
u This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me 
with their lips, but their heart is far from me," so was it here. "When 
the marked time arrived, when it was needful to take decisively one 
side or the other, when the Baptist came unto them u in tlie ivay of 
righteousness" and summoned to earnest repentance, to a revival of 
God's work in the hearts of the entire people, then many of those hither- 
to openly profane were baptized, confessing their sins ; and like the son 
who at first contumaciously refused obedience to his father's bidding, 
u repented and went :" while on the other hand, the real unrighteousness 
of the Pharisees, before concealed under show of zeal for the law, was 
evidently declared : professing willingness to go, they yet " ivent not." 
When the Lord demands of his adversaries, " Wlietlier of tlie twain 
did tJie ivill of his father ?" they cannot profess inability to solve this 
question, as they had done that other (ver. 27) ; they are obliged now 
to give a reply, though that reply condemned themselves. " They say 
unto him, The first ;" — not, of course, that he did it absolutely well, 
but by comparison with the other. Whereupon the Lord immediately 
makes the application of the words which have been reluctantly wrung 
from them, "Verily, I say unto you, that tJie publicans and harlots go 
into the kingdom of God before you." When he says, they " go before 
you," or take the lead of you, he would indicate that the door of hope 
was not yet shut upon them, that they were not yet irreversibly 
excluded from that kingdom* — the others indeed had preceded them, 
but they might still follow, if they would. Some interpreters lay an 
emphasis on the words, tt in tlie ivay of righteousness," as though they 
are brought in to aggravate the sin of the Pharisees — as though Christ 
would say, " The Baptist came, a pattern of that very righteousness of 
the law, in which you profess to exercise yourselves. He did not come, 
calling to the new life of the Gospel, of which I am the pattern, and 

many more, which however may he easily traced up to transcribers wanting to 
amend a phrase which they did not quite understand, and which seemed incom- 
plete : — TTopcvofiai, a-n-epxoMai, or some such word must be supplied. See 1 Sam. iii. 
4, 6 ; Gen. xxii. 1, LXX. 

* But he does not affirm more, so that there need be no difficulty here on ac- 
count of the Pharisees, or the greater part of them, never having followed ; the 
word (irpodyov<riv) does not imply that they will follow, it merely declares that the 
others have entered first, leaving it open to them to follow or not, Compare the 
■till stronger use of irpwrSroKos (Matt. i. 25), where there were none to come after. 



160 THE- TWO SONS. 

which you might have misunderstood ; he did not come, seeking to put 
new wine into the old bottles ; hut he came, himself fulfilling that very 
idea of righteousness which you pretended to have set before yourselves, 
that which consisted in strong and marked separation of himself from 
sinners, and earnest asceticism ; and yet you were so little hearty in the 
matter, that for all this he found no acceptance among you, no more 
acceptance than I have found. You found fault with him for the 
strictness of his manner of life, as you find fault with me for the 
condescension of mine, — and not merely did you reject him at first, hut 
afterward when his preaching bore manifest fruit in the conversion of 
sinners, when God had thus set his seal to; it, when ' the publicans 
and harlots believed him, 1 even then you could not be provoked to 
jealousy; u Ye, when ye had seen it, repented not* afterward, that ye 
might believe him." 

In many copies, and some not unimportant ones, it is the son that is 
first spoken to, who promises to go, and afterwards disobeys, and the 
second who, refusing first, afterwards changes his mind, and enters on 
the work. Probably the order was thus reversed by transcribers, who 
thought that the application of the parable must be to the successive 
callings of Jews and Gentiles,! and that therefore the order of their 
callings should be preserved. But the parable does not primarily apply 
to the Jew and Gentile, but must be referred rather to the two bodies 
within the bosom of the Jewish people : — it is not said, the Gentiles 
enter the kingdom of heaven before you, but, the publicans and harlots ; 

* Ov fiere/xeX-fj^riTe — the word does not in itself describe so comprehensive a 
change as jueTtwoeu/, and as a less expressive word is comparatively very seldom 
used in Scripture. MeTajtieAeta does not of necessity signify more than the after 
anxiety for a deed done, which may be felt without any true repentance towards 
God, may be merely remorse, such as Judas felt after having betrayed his Master, 
and it is worthy of remark that this very word /xeraficXTj^eh is used of him. (Matt, 
xxvii. 3.) In the present case, however (that is, at ver. 29), the true fieravola is 
meant, the change of affections and will and conduct. For a good tracing of the 
distinction between the two words, see Spanheim's Dubia Evang., Dub. 9, v. 3, p. 
16, seq. 

f This is the view maintained by Origen, Chrysostom, and Athanasius, as also 
by Jerome, who quotes as a parallel to " I go, sir," the words of the Jews at the 
giving of the law, " All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." 
(Exod. xxiv. 7.) The Auct. Oper. Imperf. interprets it as is done above, noting at 
length the inconveniences that attend the application of it to Jew and Gentile. 
Maldonatus, who assents to his interpretation, affirms he is the only ancient author 
that gives it, and is perplexed how the other should have obtained such general 
reception — but the us i/u-ol Sowe?, with which Origen introduces his explanation, 
marks, that there was another opinion current in the Church in his time ; even as 
is explicitly stated by Jerome : Alii non putant Gentilium et Judseorum esse para- 
bolam, sed simpliciter peccatorum et justorum. 



THE TWO SONS. 161 

while yet the other, if the parable had admitted, (and if it had admitted, 
it would have required it,) would have been a far stronger way of 
provoking them to jealousy. (Rom x. 21, 22.) The other application of 
the parable need not indeed be excluded, since the whole Jewish nation 
stood to the G-entile world, in the same relation which the more self- 
righteous among themselves did to notorious trangressors. But it is 
not till the next parable that Jew and G-entile, in their relations to one 
another, and in their respective relations to the kingdom of God, oomo 
distinctly and primarily forward. 



11 



XL 

THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

Matt. xxi. 33-44; Mark xii. 1-12; Luke xx. 9-18. 

The Lord's hearers would have been well content that he here should 
have paused. But no; he will not let them go: "Hear another parable" 
as if he would say, " I have not done with you yet" ; I have still another 
word of warning and rebuke," and to that he now summons them to 
listen. There is this apparent difference between the accounts of the 
several Evangelists, that while St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the 
parable as addressed to the Pharisees, it was, according to St. Luke, 
spoken to the people. But the sacred narrative itself supplies the helps 
for clearing away this slight apparent difference, St. Luke mentioning 
the chief priests and scribes (ver. 19) in a way which shows that they 
were listeners also; and thus, being spoken in the hearing of both 
parties, in the mind of one narrator the parable seemed addressed 
mainly to the people ; in that of the others, to the Pharisees. 

The opening words at once suggest a comparison with Isaiah v. 1-7 ; 
no doubt our Lord here takes up the prophecy there, the more willingly 
building on the old foundations, that his adversaries accused him of 
destroying the law ; and not in word only, but by the whole structure of 
the parable, connecting his own appearing with all that had gone before 
in the past Jewish history, so that men should look at it as part, indeed 
as the crowning and final act, of that great dealing of mercy and 
judgment which had ever been going forward. The image of the 
kingdom of God as a vine-stock* or as a vineyardf is not peculiar to 

* The vine-stock often appears on the Maccabsean coins as the emblem of Pales- 
tine ; sometimes too the bunch of grapes, and the vine-leaf. Thus Deyling (Obss. 
Sac., v. 3, p. 236) : Botrus praeterea, folium vitis et palma, ut ex nummis apparet, 
•ymbolum erant Judaeae. 

f Bernard draws out the comparison between the Church and the vineyard at 



THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 163 

this parable, but runs through the whole Old Testament (Deut. xxxii. 
32; Ps. lxxx. 8-16; Isai. v. 1-7; xxvii. 1-7; Jer. ii. 21; Ezek. xv. 1-6; 
xix. 10) ; and has this especial fitness, that no property was considered 
to yield so large a return (Cant. viii. 11, 12), none was therefore of 
such price and esteem, even as none required such unceasing care and 
attention.* Our Lord compares himself to the vine as the noblest of 
earthly plants (John xv. 1), and in prophecy had been compared to it 
long before. (Gen. xlix. 11.) 

It would not be convenient to interpret the vineyard here as the 
Jewish church, since the vineyard is said to be taken away from the 
Jews and given to another nation ; and it is evident that this could not 
be accurately said of the Jewish church. In Isaiah, indeed, the vineyard 
is that Jewish church, and consistently with this, it is described, not as 
transferred to others, but as laid waste and utterly destroyed, its hedge 
taken away, its wall broken down, all labor of pruning or digging with- 
drawn from it, and the heavens themselves commanded that they rain no 
rain on it any more. Here, where it is transferred to other and more 
faithful husbandmen, we must rather understand by it the kingdom of 
God in its idea, which idea Jew and Gentile have been successively 
placed in conditions to realize. f Inasmuch indeed as Israel according 
to the flesh was the first occupier of the vineyard, it might be said that 
the vineyard at that time was the Jewish church ; but this arrangement 
was only accidental and. temporary, and not of necessity, as the sequel 

some length {In Cant. Serm., 30) : In fide plantata, in caritate mittit radices, de- 
fossa sarculo discipline, stercorata pcenitentium lacrymis, rigata praBdicantium 
verbis, et sic sane exuberans vino, in quo est lastitia, sed non luxuria, vino totius 
suavitatis, nullius libidinis. Hoc certe vinum lsetificat cor hominis, hoc constat et 
angelos bibere cum ketitia. Augustine also {Serm. 87, c. 1) : Cultura ipsius est iu 
nos, quod non cessat verbo suo extirpare semina mala de cordibus nostris, aperire 
cor nostrum tanquam aratro sermonis, plantare semina praeceptorum, exspectare 
fructum pietatis. Cf. Ambrose, Exp. in Laic, 1. 9, c. 29. 

* It no doubt belongs to the fitness of the image that a vineyard does, if it is to 
bring forth richly, require the most diligent and never-ceasing care, that there is 
no season in the year in which much has not to be done in it. Yirgil presses this 
very strongly, in words not unworthy to be kept in mind by all to whom a spiritual 
vineyard has been committed : see Georg., 2, 397-419, beginning — 

Est etiam ille labor curandis vitibus alter, 
Cui nunquam exhausti satis est : namque omne quotannis 
Terque quaterque solum scindendum, glebaque versis 
iEternum frangenda bidentibus ; omne levandum 
Fronde nemus. Redit agricolis labor actus in orbem, 
Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus. 

And so Cato : Nulla possessio pretiosior, nulla majorem operam requirit. 

t Origen {Comm. in Matth., in loc.) draws out clearly and well the differences 
that exist in this regard between the parable in Isaiah and that recorded by the 
Evangelists. 



164 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

abundantly proved. They were not identified with the kingdom of God ; 
to them indeed it was first given to realize that kingdom, as to these 
husbandmen the vineyard was first committed, but failure in each case 
involved forfeiture of all privileges and advantages, with the tranfer of 
them to others. 

The householder was more than the possessor of this vineyard, he 
had himself "planted" it. (Exod. xv. 17.) The planting of this spiritual 
vineyard found place under Moses and Joshua, in the establishing of the 
Jewish polity in the land of Canaan. It is described Deut. xxxii. 12-14. 
See Ezek. xvi. 9-14 ; Neh. ix. 23-25. But the further details of things 
done for the vineyard, — the hedging of it round about,* the digging the 
wine-press, the building the tower, — are these, it may be asked, to have 
any particular signification attached to them ? — or are they to be taken 
merely as general expressions of that ample provision $f grace and 
goodness which God made for his people ? Storr, as usual, will allow 
nothing in them at all beyond a general expression of God's provident 
care for his Church, such as found utterance in his words by the prophet, 
" What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done 
in it?" (Isai. v. 4.) But even those who like him most shrink from the 
interpretation of a parable except in the gross, could here, one might 
have supposed, scarcely have resisted the explanation of the hedging 
round the vineyard, which is suggested by passages like Ephes. ii. 14, 
where the law is described as " the middle wall of partition "f between 
the Jew* and Gentile. By their circumscription through the law, the 
Jews became a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the 
nations. (Num. xxiii. 9.) That law was a hedge at once of separation 



* Mr. Greswell's observation {Exp. of the Par., v. 5, p. 4), that this fence (<ppay- 
u6s) is rather a stone wall than a hedge of thorns, or of any other living materials. 
I should suppose most probably to be quite correet (see Numb. xxii. 24 ; Prov. 
xxiv. 31 ; Isai. v. 5), though in that last passage the vineyard appears to have been 
provided with both. Yet one of his grounds for this seems questionable, namely, 
that the incursions of the enemies which threatened the vineyard, the foxes (Cant, 
ii. 15) and the wild boar (Ps. Ixxx. 13); were not to be effectually repelled except 
by fences made of stone : see Neh. iv. 3: and Virgil (Georg., 2, 371), while he is 
on the very subject of the extreme injury which the various animals, — (durique 
venerium Dentis et admorso signata in stirpe cicatrix,) — may inflict upon the vines, 
enjoins not the building of stone walls, but a careful keeping of the hedges as the 
adequate measure of defence,— Texendee sepes etiam. The thorn fences, especially 
if formed, as is common in the East, of the wild aloe, would be far more effectual 
for this than any wall of stone. See also Homer, II. 18, 564. The word <ppayu6s 
itself determines nothing, as the fundamental meaning of <ppd<r<ro) seems to be tc 
Burround or inclose (Passow: umgeben, einschliessen), without itself determining 
In the least how the inclosure shall be effected. 

t WleaSroixov rov <ppayaov there, as <ppayix6s here. 



TEE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 165 

and of defence,* since in keeping distinct the line of separation between 
themselves and the idolatrous nations around them, lay their security that 
they should enjoy the continued protection of God. That protection is 
called a wall of fire Zech. ii. 5, and compare Ps. cxxv. 2 ; Isai. xxvi. 1 ; 
xxvii. 3, Nor is it unworthy of observation, that outwardly also Judea, 
through its geographical position, was hedged round — by the bounty of 
nature on every side circumscribed and defended — guarded on the east 
by the river Jordan and the two lakes, on the south by the desert and 
mountainous country of Idumasa, on the west by the sea, and by Anti- 
Libanus on the north— for so, observes Vitringa, had God in his counsels 
determined, who willed that Israel should dwell alone. 

The wine-pressf and the towerj would both be needful for the 

* Ambrose {Exp. in Due., 1. 9 ; c. 24.) explains it : Divinge custodies munitione 
valalvit. ne facile spiritalium pateret incursibus bestiarum ; and Hexaem., 1. 3, c. 
12 : Circumdedit earn velut vallo quodam caelestium prseceptorum, et angelorum 
custodia. 

f Atiu6s = torcular, in Mark viro\i\viov = lacus, in eacn case a part for the 
whole ; the digging can be applied strictly only to the latter, which was often hol- 
lowed out of the earth and then lined with masonry, as Chardin mentions that he 
found them in Persia ; sometimes they were hewn out of the solid rock. JNTonnus 
(Dionys., 12. 330) describes, in some spirited lines, how Bacchus hollowed out such 
a receptacle from thence. In the \tjv6s, or press above, the grapes were placed, 
and were there crushed commonly by the feet of men ( Judg. ix. 27 : Neh. xiii. 15 j 
Isai. xiii. 3), hence Bacchus has the epithet, Arqvaios, the wine-press treader ; at the 
bottom of this press was a closely grated hole, through which the juice, being ex- 
pressed, ran into the inro\r]viov (or irpo\^viov, Isai. v. 3, LXX.), the vat prepared 
beneath for its reception, the lacus vinarius of Columella. 

X It may be this irvpyos was the villa where at once the fruits were kept and 
the husbandmen resided ; but I should rather suppose it the tower of the watch- 
men. I have seen in Spain temporary towers erected for them, at the season when 
the grapes, approaching to ripeness, might tempt the passers by, which were there 
the more necessary, as often the vineyard lay open to the road without any protec- 
tion whatever. A scaffolding was raised to a considerable height with planks and 
poles, and matting above to defend from the heat of the sun ; and on the scaffold- 
ing, which commanded an extensive view all round, a watcher, with a long gun, was 
planted. Calderon has an Auto, La vina del Serlor, founded on this parable, and 
explains the purpose of the tower exactly so : — 

Y porque de la campana Assaltando sua portillos 

Se descubran a Io lejos Robar, sin ser descubiertos 

Sus ambitos, sin que puedan Sus frutos, para Atalaya 

Tampoco los passageros La puse essa torre enmedio. 

This tower is the biroipofyvXaKiov of Isai. i. 8, xxiv. 20, which Jerome explains : 
Specula quam custodes satorum habere consueverunt. Niebuhr {Br.xchreib. v 
Arab., p. 138) says : " In the mountainous district of Yemen, I saw here and there 
as it were nests in the trees, in which the Arabs perched themselves to watch their 
cornfields. In Tehama, where the trees were scarcer, they built for this purpose 
a high and light scaffold." "\7ard {View of the Hindoos, v. 2, p. 327, quoted by 



166 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN, 

completeness of a vineyard ; the latter not being merely the ornamenta« 
building, the kiosk which belongs to the perfection of an Eastern garden, 
and serves mainly for delight, but here serving as much for use aa 
ornament, — a place of shelter for the watchmen, who should protect the 
fruits of the vineyard, and perhaps a receptacle for the fruits themselves. 
It is difficult satisfactorily to point out distinct spiritual benefits shadowed 
forth by these, or to affirm that more is meant than generally that God 
provided his people with all things necessary for life and godliness, and 
furnished them with fixed channels and reservoirs of his blessings. All 
the explanations which are given of this tower and this wine-press # 
appear fanciful, and though often ingenious, yet no one of them such as 
to command an absolute assent, f 

Having thus richly supplied his vineyard with all things needful, he 
'•''let it out to husbandmenP These last must be different from the vine- 
yard which they were to cultivate, and must, therefore, be the spiritual 
leaders and teachers of the people, while the vineyard itself will then 
naturally signify the great body of the people, who were to be instructed 
and taught, to the end that, under diligent cultivation, they might bring 
forth fruits of righteousness.^ By the letting out of the vineyard to 



Burder) observes: "The wild hogs and buffaloes [silvestres uri, Georg., 2, 874] 
make sad havoc in the fields and orchards of the Hindoos ; to keep them out, men 
are placed on elevated covered stages in the fields;" — sometimes, as a friend has 
told me, on mounds built with sods of earth ; and the watchers are frequently 
armed with slings, which they use with great dexterity and effect, to drive away 
invaders of every description. The Greek proverb, ykvice? oirapa, cpvAaicos inXehoi- 
ttStos, alludes to the custom of setting such watchers over a vintage. 

* Generally the wine-press is taken to signify the prophetic institution. Thus 
Irenaeus {Con. Hcer., 1. 4, c. 36) : Torcular fodit, receptaculum prophetici Spiritus 
prasparavit. Hilary (in Malth.) : In quos [prophetas] musti modo qusedam uber- 
tas Spiritas Sancti ferventis influeret. So Ambrose, Exp. in Laic, 1. 9, c. 24. 

f In the parallel passage in Isaiah two other principal benefits are recorded, — 
that the vineyard was on a fruitful hill (apertos Bacchus amat colles, Virgil,) slop- 
ing towards the rays of the sun, and that the stones were gathered out from it 
(2 Kings, iii. 19), the last with allusion to the casting out of the Canaanites, 
that else might have proved stumbling-blocks for God's people. (Ps. exxv. 3.) 
"With the whole parable Ezek. xvi. will form an instructive parallel. There too, in 
the same manner, although under altogether a different image, the Lord ifpbraids 
tli3 ingratitude of his people with the enumeration of the rich provision which he 
had made for them. With this description of the ample furniture of the vineyard 
might be compared ver. 10-12 of that chapter, for they too in like manner are em- 
ployed in describing what God did for his people at their coming out of Egypt. 

X A friend who kindly looked over the notes on some of these • parables before 
publication has added a note, which I am sure every reader will be glad I haw; 
preserved ; he says : " I do not absolutely question the truth of this interpretation. 
but it Beems to me rather an escape from a difficulty which does not exist more in 
the parable than in all our customary language about the Church. The Church is 



THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 167 

those, we must understand the solemn commital which the law made, of 
this charge to the priests and Levites ; their solemn commission is 
recognized and pressed in such passages as Mai. ii. 7 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 2 
It is worthy of observation, that the parable is so constructed as to imply 
that the disobedience, the contumacy, the unprofitableness of the Jews, 
were to be looked at not merely in the light of common wickedness, 
but as a breach of the most solemn trust, — as ingratitude of the darkest 
dye ; for no doubt it was a great benefit to the husbandmen to be put in 
possession of a vineyard so largely and liberally furnished (compare 
Neh. ix. 25; Deut. xvi. 11), and every thing implies that they had 
entered into covenant with the proprietor, concerning what proportion 
of the fruits they were to pay to him in their season— even as the Jewish 
people made a solemn covenant with God at Horeb, that as he would be 
their God, so they would be his people. 

The householder then, having thus intrusted the husbandmen with 
the keeping and cultivation of the vineyard on some certain terms, 
" went into a far country" and, as St. Luke adds, u for a long while" 
At Sinai, when the theocratic constitution was founded, and in the 
miracles which accompanied the deliverance from Egypt and the bring- 
ing into Canaan, the Lord may be said to have openly manifested^ 
himself to Israel, and this done, to have withdrawn himself for a while, 
not speaking to the people again face to face (Deut. xxxiv. 10-12), but 
waiting in patience to see what the law would effect, — what manner of 
works the people, under the teaching of their spiritual guides, would* 
bring forth.* 

'•'•And ivhen the time of the fruit drew near, lie sent his servants to 
the husbandmen that tliey might receive tlie fruits of it." How, it may 
be asked, are these servants to be distinguished from the husbandmen f 
Exactly in this, that the servants, that is, the prophets, and other more 
eminent ministers of God in his theocracy, were sent, being raised up 
at particular times, having particular missions, — their power lying in 
their mission, while the others were the more regular and permanently 
established ecclesiastical authorities, whose power lay in the very con- 
stitution of the theocracy itself, f The servants were sent to receive the 

both teacher and taught', but the teachers are not merely the ministers : the whole 
Church of one generation teaches the whole Church of another, by its history, acts, 
words, mistakes. &c. The Church existing out of time an unchangeable body, 
teaches the members of the Church existing in every particular time. The whole 
subject requires to be diligently examined and elucidated." 

* Ambrose (Exp. in Luc, 1. 9, c. 23) : Multis temporibus ahf uit, ne praepropera 
videretur exactio : nam quo indulgentior liberalitas, e6 inexcusabilior pervicacia. 
Theophylact : tj aTrodr)fj.la rov Qeou, 7} ixaKpobvjxia. Bengel : Innuitur tempus divin» 
taciturnitatis. ubi homines agunt pro arbitrio. See Ezek. viii. 12 ; Ps. x. 5. 

t Bengel : Servi sunt ministri extraordinarii, majores : agricolae, ordinarii. 



168 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

fruits of the vineyard, or, as St. Mark and St. Luke have it, to receive 
u of the fruit of the vineyard"* the householder's share of the produce, 
whatever that might have been — the rent not being to be paid in money, 
but in a fixed proportion of the fruits. Olshausen says here, " These 
fruits which are demanded, are in no wise to be explained as particular 
works, nor yet as a condition of honesty and uprightness, but much 
rather as the repentance and the inward longing after true inward 
righteousness, which the law was unable to bring about. It is by no 
means meant to be said that the law had not an influence in producing 
uprightness : it cuts off the grosser manifestations of sin, and reveals its 
hidden abomination ; so that a righteousness according to the law, can 
even under the law come forth as fruit, but this to be sufficing, must 
have a sense of the need of a redemption for its basis. (Rom. iii. 20.) 
The servants therefore here appear as those who seek for these spiritual 
needs, that they may link to them the promises concerning a coming 
Redeemer : but the unfaithful husbandmen who had abused their own 
position, denied and slew these messengers of grace." 

The conduct of the wicked husbandmen toward their lord's servants 
is brought out with more particularity in the two later Gospels than in 
the first. In St. Luke, the gradual growth of the outrage under the sense 
of impunity is distinctly traced. When the first servant came, they 
"beat him and sent him away empty;" the next they not only beat, but 
" entreated him shamefully" or according to St. Mark, who defines the 
very nature of the outrage, " at him they cast stones, and wounded him 
in the headrf and sent him away shamefully handled." The expression 

* 'Airb rod Kapirov — according to the well-known metayer system once prevalent 
over a great part of Europe, and still known in parts of France and in Italy ; the 
two parties would in Latin be styled partiarii. Pliny (Ep., 1. 9. 37) mentions of 
some of his estates which had hitherto been very badly managed, that the only way 
in which he could get any thing from them, was by letting them on this system : 
Medendi una ratio si non nummo sed partibus loeem : he was to appoint some 
guardians (exactores and custodes) to secure his portion of the produce — differing 
it is probable only from these servants, that they were to be permanently on the 
spot, to prevent fraud, and to see that he obtained his just share. Chardin ( Voy. 
en Perse, v. 5, p. 384, Langles ed.) gives much information on the terms upon which 
these arrangements are commonly made in Persia, and proceeds showing how some- 
thing like the dishonest and violent breaking of the agreement which is supposed 
in the parable might be of frequent occurrence : Cet accord, qui paroit un marche" 
de bonne foi et qui le devroit 6tre, se trouve neanmoins une source intarissable do 
fraude, de contestation, et de violence, oil la justice n'est presque jamais gardde, et 
ce qu'il y a de fort singulier e'est que le seigneur est celui qui a toujours du pire, 
et qui est le"se\ He then enters into details of some of these frauds and violences, 
of which, it is true, none reach the pitch which is here supposed. See Du Cange, 
i. vv. Mcdietarius and Medietas. 

t St. Mark has here (xii. 4) a singular use of the word Ke$c\ai6u>, as to wound 



THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 169 

of the original* would seem to indicate, that in the wantonness of their 
cruelty and pride these husbandmen further devised some insulting out- 
rages, not expressly named in the parable, against this servant, whereby 
they might the more plainly testify their scorn of the master — some 
outrages, perhaps, like Hanun's, when he " took David's servants, and 
shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the 
middle, and sent them away." (2 Sam. x. 4). The third they wounded, 
and cast out of the vineyard with violence, — flung him forth, it might 
be, with hardly any life in him. In the two first evangelists the outrage 
reaches even to the killing of some of the subordinate messengers — in 
St. Luke's narration it is perhaps preferable, that this last and worst 
outrage is reserved for the son himself, though on the other hand it 
might be said that some of the prophets were not merely maltreated, 
but actually put to death. Thus, if we may trust Jewish tradition, 
Jeremiah was stoned by the exiles in Egypt, Isaiah sawn asunder by king 
Manasseh ; and for an ample historical justification of this description, 
see Jer. xxxvii. 38 ; 1 Kin. xvii. 13 ; xxii. 24-27; 2 Kin. vi. 31 ; xxi. 16; 
2 Chron. xxiv. 19-22; xxxvi. 16; and also Acts vii. 52; 1 Thess. ii. 15; 
and the whole passage finds a parallel in the words of the apostle (Heb. 
xi. 36), " And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea 
moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were 
sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword ; ... of whom 
the world was not worthy." 

The patience of the householder under these extraordinary provo- 
cations is wonderful, — that he sends messenger after messenger for the 
purpose of bringing back, if possible, these wicked men to a sense of 
duty, and does not at once resume possession of his vineyard, and inflict 
summary vengeance, as the end proves that he had power to do, upon 
them : and this his patience is thus brought out and magnified, that it 

in the head, while yet it is never elsewhere used hut as to gather up in one sum, as 
under one head — of which its more correct use, we have a good example in the 
Epistle of Barnabas, c. v., which as hearing in another aspect upon this present 
parable, may be quoted. It is there said that the Son of God came in the flesh, 
%va rb T€\eiov ru>v afiapriuv Ke<pa\ai(t>crr) rots Ztu^acriv Iv Savarco robs irpo<priTas avrev. 
Passow seems hardly accurate when he says, s. v., with allusion, as is evident, to 
this passage, Ke(p€\ai6co in N. T. = Ke<|>aA/£a>, todten. For it is clear it does not 
mean to decapitate or wound mortally on the head, since they sent him away on 
whom they inflicted this injury. "We have parallels in ycurrplfy, to strike on the 
stomach. yvaSSco, on the cheek. The notion of some that here also it is, brevitcr 
vel summatim egerunt, they make short work of it, or as Lightfoot expresses it, 
alluding to the circumstance that the servant came to demand payment, — they 
reckoned with him, they squared accounts with him (ironically), is quite unten- 
able. 



170 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

may set forth the yet more wonderful forbearance and long-suffering of 
God : " Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising 
early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that 
I hate." (Jer. xliv. 4.) "Nevertheless they were disobedient, and 
rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy 
prophets who testified against them, to turn them to thee, and they 
wrought great provocations." (Neh. ix. 26.) The whole confession made 
in that chapter by the Levites is in itself an admirable commentary on 
this parable. 

" But last of all he sent unto them his son" or in the still more 
affecting words of St. Mark (ver. 6), " Having yet therefore one son, his 
well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They ivill reverence 
my son" (See Heb. i. 1.) This was the last and crowning effort of 
divine mercy, after which, on the one side all the resources even of 
heavenly love are exhausted, on the other the measure of sins is 
perfectly filled up. The description of the son as the only one, as the 
well-beloved, marks as strongly as possible the difference of rank between 
him and the servants, the worth and dignity of his person, who only was 
a Son in the highest sense of the word* (see Heb. iii. 5, 6) ; and un- 
doubtedly they who were our Lord's actual hearers quite understood 
what he meant, and the honor which in these words he claimed as his 
own, though they were unable to turn his words against himself, and to 
accuse him on the strength of them, of making himself, as indeed he did 
then affirm himself, the Son of God. When the householder expresses 
his conviction, that however those evil men may have outraged his 
inferior messengers, they will stand in awe of and reverence his son, it 
is hardly worth while to make a difficulty here, as some have done, from 
the fact that he whom the householder represents must have fully known 
from the beginning what treatment his Son would receive from those to 
whom he sent him : — not that there is not a difficulty, but that it is the 
same difficulty which runs through every thing, that of the relations in 
which man's freedom and God's foreknowledge stand to one anotherf — 
and it does not in truth come out more strongly here than it does every 
where else, and therefore requires not to be especially treated of in this 
place. 

* This has been often observed by the early Church writers when proving the 
divinity of the Son ; as by Ambrose {De Fide, 1. 5, c. 7) : Vide quia ante servos, 
postea filium nominavit ; ut scias quod Deus Filius unigenitus secundum divinitatis 
potentiam nee nomen habet, nee consortium commune cum servis. Cf. Ip.en.eus, 
Con. Hcer., 1. 4, c. 36, § 1. 

■f Jerome : Quod autem dicit, Verebuntur forte filium meum, non de ignorantift 
dicitur : Quid cnim nesciat Paterfamilias, qui hoc loco Deus intelligitur 1 Sed 
semper ambigere Deus dicitur, ut libera voluntas homini reservetur. Cf. Ambrose, 
De Fide, 1. 5, c. 17, 18. 



THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 171 

u But wlien the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, 
This is the Jieir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance." 
Compare John xi. 47-53, and the counsels of Joseph's brethren against 
him, Gen. xxxvii. 19 ; " When they saw him afar off, even before he 
came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him, and they 
said one to another, Behold this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, 
let us slay him, .... and we shall see what will become of his dreams." 
As they, thinking to defeat the purpose of God concerning their younger 
brother, helped to bring it to pass, so the Jewish rulers were the instru- 
ments to fulfil that purpose of God concerning Christ which they meant 
to bring to nothing.* (Acts, iii. 18; iv. 27, 2$.) — " This is the lieir ;" 
he for whom the inheritance is meant, and to whom it will in due course 
rightfully arrive — not as in earthly relations, by the death, but by the 
free appointment, of the actual possessor. For it is evident that " heir" 
is not here used, as it often laxly is, a synonyme for lord,f but the idea 
of one who is not in present possession of a good, but hereafter is com- 
ing to it, must be held fast. (Compare Phil. ii. 9—1 1.) Christ is " heir 
of all things" (Heb. i. 2), not as he is the Son of God, for the Church 
has always detected Arian tendencies lurking in that interpretation, but 
as he is the Son of man. So Theodoret : " The Lord Christ is heir of 
all things, not as God, but as man ; for as God he is maker of all." 

It is the heart which speaks in God's hearing ; the thought of men's 
heart is their true speech, and therefore here given even as though it 
were the words of their lips; — the husbandmen say, " Come, let us kill 
him;" not that we are to imagine that the Pharisees even in their 
secret counsels ever trusted one another so far, or dared to look their 
own wickedness so directly in the face, as thus to say, " This is the 
Messiah, therefore let us slay him." But they desired the inheritance 
should be theirs, they desired that what God had intended should only 
be transient and temporary, enduring till the times of reformation, should 
be made permanent, — and this, because they had prerogatives and pri- 
vileges under the imperfect system, which would cease when the more 
perfect scheme was brought in, or rather which, not ceasing, would yet 
be transformed into other higher privileges, for which they had no 
care. The great master-builder was about to take down the temporary 
scaffolding which had now served its end, and this his purpose, they the 
under-builders were setting themselves to resist,}: and were determined, 
at whatever cost, to resist to the uttermost. — And further, may we not 



* Augustine : Ut possiderent, occiderunt, et quia occiderunt, perdiderunt. 
■f Just as in Latin oftentimes haeres =dominus 

% Hilary : Consilium colonorum et liseriditatis occiso hserede presumptio, 
Inanis est gloriam Leges perempto Christo posse retineri. 



172 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

Bee in this thought of killing the heir, and seizing on the inheritance and 
making it their own, an allusion to the principle of all self-righteousness, 
which is a seizing on the divine inheritance, a seeking to comprehend 
and take down into self that light, which is only light while it is recog- 
nized as something above self, and whereof man is permitted to be a 
partaker, but which he neither himself originated, nor yet can ever pos- 
sess in fee, or as his own, or otherwise than as a continual receiver of it 
from another ; a light too, which, by the very success of the attempt to 
take it into his own possession, is as inevitably lost and extinguished, as 
would be a ray of our natural light if we succeeded in cutting it off 
from its luminous source — a truth of which angels and men have made 
mournful experience. 

" And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew 
him." All three narrators describe him as thus " cast out of the vine- 
yard" — by which we are reminded of him who " suffered without the 
gate." (Heb. xiii. 12, 13; John xix. 17.) By that, as in the Penta- 
teuch by the exclusion from the camp, was signified the cutting off from 
the people of God, and from all share in their blessings. Thus when 
Naboth perished on charges of blasphemy against G-od and the king, 
that is, for theocratic sins, " they carried him forth out of the city, and 
stoned him with stones, that he died."* (1 Kin. xxi. 13.) In St. Mark 
it would rather seem that having slain the son first, they afterwards cast 
out the body : they denied it the common rites of sepulture : they flung 
it forth to show what they had done, and as much as to say, that was 
their answer to the householder's demands. 

Having brought the tale of these husbandmen's guilt to a conclusion, 
and prophesied to the Jewish rulers the wickedness which in a few days 
they should accomplish,! Christ proceeds to ask, u When the lard, there- 
fore, of the vineyard cometh, tvhat will he do unto those husbandmen ?" 
It is very observable how the successive generations, who for so many 
centuries had been filling up the measure of the iniquity of Israel, are 
considered, throughout the entire parable, but as one body of husband- 

* The act of Naboth dying for his vineyard has been often adduced as a pro- 
phecy, not by word, but by deed, of the death of Christ and the purpose of that 
death. Thus, Ambrose addresses the vineyard of the Lord, the Church which he 
has purchased with his own blood (Exp. in Due, 1. 9, c. 33) : Salve vinea tanto 
digna custode : te non unius Nabuthse sanguis, sed innumerabilium prophetarum 
et (quod est amplius) pretiosus curor Domini consecravit. Hie . . . temporalem 
vineam defendebat, te vero in perpetuum multorum nobis martyrum plantavit 
interitus, te crux apostolorum aemula Doniinicse passionis usque in orbis totius 
terminos propagavit. « 

•f We have a remarkable example of a like prophesying to men their wicked- 
ness, as a last endeavor to turn them away from that wickedness, in Elisha's pro- 
phecy to Hazael, 2 Kin. viii. 12-15. 



THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 173 

men. And this, because God's truth is every where opposed to that shal* 
low nominalism which would make such a word as u nation" a dead ab- 
straction, a mere convenient help to the understanding. God will deal 
with nations as indeed being, as having a living unity in themselves, at 
in fact bodies, and not as being merely convenient mental terms to ex- 
press certain aggregations of individuals. Unless this were so, all con- 
fession of our fathers' sins would be mere mockery, and such passages 
as Matt, xxiii. 32-35, without any meaning at all. This is one of the 
many ways in which God encounters our selfish, self-isolating tenden- 
cies ; and while there is an abundant blessing in this law of his govern- 
ment, supplying as it does new motives and incentives to good, so is 
there no hardship or injustice in it. For while there is a life of the whole, 
there is also a life of each part, so that even should we belong to a 
nation, in that of its generations which is chastised for all its own and 
its fathers' iniquities, — a generation upon which, having filled up the last 
drop of the measure, the accumulated weight of chastisement is descend- 
ing, — yet it remains always possible for every individual even of that 
generation, by personal faith and repentance, to withdraw himself, not 
indeed always from sharing in the outward calamity, though often there 
will be an ark when a world perishes, a Pella when Jerusalem is de- 
stroyed, but always to withdraw himself from that which really consti- 
tutes the calamity, — the wrath of God, of which the outward visitation 
is but the expression. 

The necessity of preserving the due probabilities of the narrative 
renders it, of course, impossible that it should be the son, through whom 
the final vengeance is executed on these thankless and wicked husband- 
men ; he is slain, and cannot, like him whom he shadows forth, rise 
again to take just vengeance on his murderers. It must necessarily be 
the lord of the vineyard, — that is, the Father : neither is there any thing 
here which is not easily reconcilable to the general doctrine of the 
Scripture, for it is the Father revealing himself in the Son, who both 
gave the law at Sinai, and will also, in the end of time, return to take 
vengeance on all that obey not the Gospel. In the question itself, 
" Wlien the lord oftlte vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those hus- 
bandmen!" Christ makes the same appeal to his hearers, compelling them 
to condemn themselves out of their .own mouths, which Isaiah (v. 3) had 
done before.* It may be that the Pharisees, to whom he addressed him- 
self, had as yet missed the scope of the parable, answering as they did, 

* Vitringa there observes : Tarn enim liquidum est Dei jus, ut si homo exuto 
affectu in tertio simili contempletur quod sufcamore excaecatus in se videre non vult, 
per conscientiam obligatur ad agnoscendam causae divinae justitiam. Imo neminem 
Deus damnat, nisi quern sua condemnet conscientia. Habet enim Deus in omni 
homine suuni tribunal, sui sedem judicii, et per hominem de homine judicat. 



174 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN. 

" He will miserably destroy those ivicked men* and will let out his vine' 
yard unto other husbandmen" and so, before they were aware, pro- 
nounced sentence against themselves ; or Olshausen may be more cor* 
rect in supposing that they as yet pretended not to perceive its drift, and 
therefore rendered necessary the still more explicit words (ver. 42-44), 
which it was impossible any longer to affect to misunderstand : " There- 
fore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and 
given to a ?iatio?i bringing forth the fruits thereof?' 1 Then at length 
Christ and his adversaries stood face to face, as did once before a pro- 
phet and a wicked king of Israel, when the prophet, having obtained in 
his disguise a sentence from the lips of the king against himself, removed 
the ashes from his face, and the king u discerned him that he was 
of the prophets," and that he had unconsciously pronounced his own 
doom. (1 Kin. xx. 41.) — The u God forbid" which, according to St. 
Luke, the people uttered when they heard the terrible doom of the hus- 
bandmen, gives evidence that the scope of the parable had not escaped 
their comprehension, — that they had understood it, even before its plain 
interpretation at the last.f The Pharisees had too much wariness and 
self-command to have allowed such an exclamation to have escaped from 
them. The exclamation itself was either an expression of fear, desiring 
that such evil might be averted, — or of unbelief, " That shall never be, 
it is impossible that our privileges can ever be so forfeited :" — This last 

* KaKovs nanus, a proverbial expression, and one as Grotius observes, petita ex 
purissimo sermone Graeco ; he does not, however, give any examples. This re- 
markable one, which is a parallel in much more than those two words, may suffice 
in piace of many that might be adduced. 

Toiydp <r<$> 'OXv/xttov toCS' 6 rrpecrfievav rrar^p, 

MwflfJLWV T 'EpiUVVS, KCU T€\C(T(p6pOS AIkT] 

KaKovs K(iKa>s (p&eipztau, ucrirep tf&e\ov 
Tbv avdpa \dfiais eKfiaXeiv, aval'ius. 

Sophocles, Ajax, 1389. 

Our version has not attempted to preserve the paronomasia, which for evident 
reasons is far from being easy. The same difficulty attends the double <|>3-e Ipeip 
(1 Cor. iii. 17,) for which our version has equally failed to give an equivalent. 
Compare Apuleius : At te . . . pessimum pessime perdant. In Plutarch's Amator. 
10, we meet na\bv Ka\£>s.— Row remarkable in connection with this passage are 
those words of Josephus, {gell. Jud., 4, 5, 2.) in which he asserts his conviction 
that the destruction of Jerusalem might be traced up to the murder of one man, 
Ananus the high priest: he only errs in the person whom he names. 

f Augustine {De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 70) is not very successful in his scheme 
for reconciling any slight discrepancy which may here appear between the narra- 
tives of the different Evangelists ; but^he apparent discrepancy is in itself so slight, 
and so easily removable, that even Strauss, who in general makes the weakest and 
thousand times refuted objections do service anew, has not thought it worth while 
to bring forward this. 



THE WICKED HUSBAXDMEX. 175 

m more probable from the spirit and temper of those who give it utter- 
ance. 

Thereupon the Lord, in confirmation of this truth so strange to his 
hearers, quotes a prophecy from the Old Testament, which proved that 
such a turn of things had been contemplated long before in the counsels 
of God — " Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the 
builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner ?" The 
quotation is from Ps. cxviii. 22, 23, a psalm of which, as already has 
been noted, the Jews recognized the application to the Messiah, and of 
which there is the same application at Acts iv. 1 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 7 ; and an 
allusion somewhat more remote, Ephes. ii. 20.* The passage quoted 
forms an exact parallel with this parable. The builders answer to the 
husbandmen : — they were appointed of God to carry up the spiritual 
building, as these to cultivate the spiritual vineyard. The rejection of 
the chief corner stone answers exactly to the denying and murdering 
the heir. The reason why he leaves for a moment the image of the 
vineyard, is because of its inadequacy to set forth one important part of 
the truth, which yet was needful to make the moral complete, namely 
this, that the malice of the Pharisees should not defeat the purpose of 
God, — that the son should yet be the heir, — that not merely vengeance 
should be taken, but that he should take it. Now this is distinctly set 
forth by the rejected stone becoming the head of the corner, on which 
the builders stumbled and fell, and were broken,! — on which they were 
now already thus stumbling and falling, and which, if they set them- 
selves against it to the end, would fall upon them and crush and destroy 
them utterly.^ They fall on the stone, who are offended at Christ in 
his low estate (Isai. viii. 14; Luke ii. 34); of this sin his hearers 
were already guilty. There was yet a worse sin which they were on 
the point of committing, which he warns them would be followed with a 
more tremendous punishment : they on whom the stone falls are they 

* The anpoyuvialos there = Xibos us K€<pa\7)v yuvius here ; the headstone of 
Zech. iv. 7. Aquila : 6 \l&os 6 irpwrevwu. (See 1 Kin. v. 17.) It was a favorite 
view of the early Fathers that Christ was called the corner stone, because he united 
the Jew and the Gentile, making both one : thus Augustine, in almost numberless 
places, — for instance (Serm. 88, c. 11) : Angulus duos parietes copulat de diverso 
venientes. Quid tam diversum, quam circumcisio et prseputium, habens unuin 
parietem de Judaea., alterum parietem de gentibus 1 sed angulari lapide copulantur. 

f Cajetan : Plus subjungit quam parabola pateretur : Parabola enim usque ad 
vindictam duxit ; sed hac additione suppletur, quod occisio filii non privavit filium 
hsereditate : hoc enim significat adjuncta prophetia de Messia sub metamorphosa 
lapidis. 

$ Lachmann marks ver. 44 in Matthew, as an interpolation, brought in from St. 
Luke ; and it certainly seems out of its place, as one would have naturally looked 
for it after ver. 42. 



176 THE WICKED HUSBANDMEN". 

who set themselves in distinct and self-conscious opposition against the 
Lord, — who, knowing who he is, do yet to the end oppose themselves to 
him and to his kingdom ;* and they shall not merely fall and be "broken, 
for one might recover himself, though with some present harm, from such 
a fall as this ; but on them the stone shall fall and shall grindf them to 
powder, — in the words of Daniel, " like the chaff of the summer thresh- 
ing-floors," destroying them with a doom irreversible, and from which 
there should be no recovery. J 

All three Evangelists notice the exasperation of the chief priests and 
scribes, when they perceived, as they all did at last, though it would 
seem some sooner than others, that the parable was spoken against them; 
they no longer kept any terms with the Lord, and, had they not feared 
the people, would have laid violent hands on him at once. Yet not even 
so did he give them up ; but as he had, in this parable, set forth their 
relation to God as a relation of duty, as he had shown them how a charge 
was laid upon them, which they incurred the greatest guilt and the most 
fearful danger in neglecting to fulfil, so in the ensuing parable, — of the 
Marriage of the King's Son, he sets it forth in a yet more inviting light 
as a relation of privilege, — not any more as a duty and charge, but as 
a grace and boon freely imparted to them ; which yet they incurred an 
equal danger and guilt in counting light of or despising. 

* So Tertullian {Adv. Marc, 1. 3, c. 7), and Augustine : Christus verus lapis in 
hoc seculo quasi terrae infixus jacet, in judicio ver6 futuro quasi ex summo veniet, 
impios conteret : hoc dictum est de lapide illo, Qui offenderit in lapidem ilium, con- 
quassabit eum, super quern venerit, conteret eum : aliud est conquassari, aliud 
conteri : conquassari minus est quam conteri. 

f Aucfifost, from Xik/xSs = ittvop, Matt. iii. 12, the fan with which the chaff, 
which in the act of threshing had been crushed and broken into minute fragments, 
is scattered and driven away upon the wind. (Isai. xli. 2, 25, 16.) In the N. T. it 
occurs only here ; in the parallel passage, Dan. ii. 44, At/c^cei irdcas ras jSaciAe/as. 

^ H. De Sto Victore makes the following application of the parable to every 
man (AnnoU. in Luc.) : Secundum moralem sensum vinea locatur, cum mysterium 
baptismi fidelibus ad exercendum opere committitur. Mittuntur tres servi ut de 
fructu accipiant, cum Lex Psalmodia, Prophetia, ad bene agendum hortatur : sed 
contumeliis affecti, vel caesi ejiciuntur, cum sermo auditus vel contemnitur, vel 
blasphematur, Missum insuper hseredem occidit, qui filium Dei contemnit, et 
spiritui quo sanctificatus est, contumeliam facit. Vinea alteri datur, cum gratis, 
quam superbus abjicit, humilis ditatur. 



XII. 

THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON." 

Matthew xxii. 1-14. 

This parable, and that which is found at Luke xiv. 16, are not to be 
confounded with one another.f as if they were only two different ver- 
sions of the same discourse, though Calvin, indeed, and others have so 
confounded them. It is true that the same image lies at the root of both, 
that, namely, of an invitation to a festival ; yet it is plain that they were 
spoken on very different occasions, — that at a meal, this in the temple, — 
and that, too, at a much earlier period of our Lord's ministry than this. 
For then the hostility of the Pharisaic party had not yet openly declared- 
itself, nor indeed reached that pitch to which it afterwards arrived ; on 
the contrary, we find one of the chief Pharisees, on the very occasion 
when the other parable was spoken, had invited the Saviour to eat bread 
with him. (Luke xiv. 1.) But when this parable was spoken, their hos* 
tility had already attained to the highest point, even to the formal deter- 
mination of making away with Christ by violent means. (John xi. 47— 
53.) Then there was yet hope tLat they might, perhaps, be won over 
to obedience to the truth : now they were fixed in their rejection of the 
counsel of God, and in their hatred of his Christ. And consistently with 
the different times, and the different tempers of the hearers, the parable 
in St. Luke wears a milder, in St. Matthew a severer aspect : — in the 
latter the guilt is greater, the retribution more terrible. In that other, 
the guests decline indeed the invitation, but civilly excuse themselves ; — 

* This title, which is the one given to the parable in the heading of the chapter 
in cur version, seems preferable to that by which it is sometimes called, namely, 
tho VTedding Garment ; for then the name is given, not from the main circum- 
stance of the narrative, but from that which is but an episode in it : and the other 
title, The Marriage of the King's Son, quite as effectually distinguishes the present 
parable from that of the Great Supper in St. Luke. 

t See Augustine, De Cons. Evang.. 1. 2, c. 71. < 

12 



178 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

in this, they mark their contempt for the invitation as strongly as they 
can, not thinking it worth their while, to make any excuse, and some of 
them maltreating and killing the servants, the bearers of the message. 
Doubtless too, had it consisted with the decorum of the other parts of the 
narration, the king's son himself would have been the bearer of the invi- 
tation and the victim of their outrage, as was the householder's son in 
the last parable. In that, the contemptuous guests are merely excluded 
from the festival, — in this, their city is burned up and themselves de- 
stroyed. And as the contempt would be aggravated in proportion to the 
dignity and honor of the person inviting and the solemnity of the occa 
sion, this increased guilt is set forth by the fact of its being a king, — and 
no common man, as in that other, — who makes the festival, — so that re- 
bellion is mingled with their contempt, — and the festival itself no ordi- 
nary one, but one in honor of his son's marriage ; — by which latter cir- 
cumstance is brought out the relation of the Jews, not merely to the 
kingdom of Grod in general, but their relation to Jesus, the personal theo- 
cratic King ; and in every way the guilt involved in their rejection of 
him is heightened. And again, .while in the parable recorded by St. 
Luke, nothing more is threatened than that God would turn from one 
portion of the Jewish people, — from the priests and the Pharisees, — and 
offer the benefits which they counted light of, to another part of the same 
nation, — the people that knew not the law, the publicans and harlots, — 
with only a slight intimation (ver. 23) of the call of the Gentiles ; in St. 
Matthew it is threatened that the kingdom of God shall be taken wholly 
away from the Jewish people, who had now proved themselves in the 
mass, and with very few exceptions; despisers of its privileges, and should 
be given to the Gentiles.* 

But one of the latests cavillers,! not attending to these circumstances 
which justify and perfectly explain the appearance of the parable in 
forms so different, asserts that here St. Luke is the only accurate 
•narrator of Christ's words, and that St. Matthew has mixed up with 
them some heterogeneous elements, — for instance, some particulars, as 
of the maltreatment and murder of the servants, drawn from the parable 



* Fleck {De Reg'. Div., p. 241) with truth observes : Parabolarum in posterio- 
rftms Matthseiani libri partibus propositarum talis est indoles, ut sacrum diviui 
animi mcerorem spirent, et severum prodant habitum. Incidunt in ea tcmpora 
quibus Pharisseorum, sacerdotum, seniorumque plebis machinationem, maligna 
consilia, ct coocitatem abunde expertus Servator, divinse causa3 quotidie infestiores 
praevidit futuros. And linger (De Parab. Jes. Nat, p. 122) : Videtur itaque Mat- 
thaeus parabolam tradidisse, qualem Jesus posteriore eaque austeriore occasions 
ipse repetierit, variatam, auctiorem, severiorem, jam toto de populo judaico mcest€ 
vaticinantcm. 

T Strauss : Leben Jesu., v. 1, p. 677, seq. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SOK 179 

preceding ; and has also blended into the same whole, the fragment of 
another, namely, the Wedding Garment, which when uttered, was totally 
distinct. For the first assertion, his only argument wearing the slightest 
appearance of probability, is, that while it is quite intelligible how the 
husbandmen should abuse and maltreat servants of their lord, who came 
demanding rent from them ; it is inconceivable, and therefore could not 
find place in a parable, of which the very condition is, that it should 
have perfect verisimilitude, — that invited guests, however unwilling to 
keep their engagement, should actually maltreat and kill the servants 
sent to remind them that the festival, to which they were engaged, was 
now ready. It is of course true that this can with difficulty be conceived, 
when we suppose no other motive but unwillingness to keep the engage- 
ment at work in them. But may we not rather presume that a deep 
alienation from their lord, with a readiness to resist and rebel against 
him. existing long before^ found its utterance here? In the presence of 
these his ambassadors, an outrage against whom would express as much 
as an outrage against himself, the desired occasion may have offered 
itself for showing a hostility, which had long been entertained.* The 
little apparent motive makes their conduct almost monstrous, yet thus 
fitter to declare the monstrous fact, that men should maltreat and slay 
the messengers of God's grace, the ambassadors of Christ, who came to 
them with glad tidings of good things, — should be ready to rend the?n, 
as well as to tread their pearls under foot. 

His other objection, that the latter part of the parable which relates 
to the wedding garment cannot have originally belonged to it, is partly 
the old one, that the guest could not in justice be punished for not hav- 
ing that, which, as the course of the story goes, he had no opportunity of 
obtaining — on which objection there will be occasion presently to remark 
— and partly ; that this is an entirely new and alien element introduced 
into, and marring the unity of, the parable : something appended to, not 
intimately cohering with it. But so far from this being the case, we 
have here a wonderful example of the love and wisdom which marked 
the teaching of our Lord. For how fitting was it in a discourse which 
set forth how sinners of every degree were invited to a fellowship in the 
blessings of the Gospel, that they should be reminded likewise, that 
for the lasting enjoyment of these, they must put off their former con- 

* Oftentimes in the East, a feast would have a great political significance, would 
in fact be a great gathering of the vassals of the king ; contemplated on this side. 
their refusal to come at once assumes the aspect of rebellion. Thus there are 
many reasons to suppose that the feast recorded in Esth. i. is the same as the great 
gathering which Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made when he was planning his Greek expe- 
dition. (avKkoyov ziriKXtiTov Uepaeuv twv apiarosr, Herod. 1. 7, C. 8.) though Heroda 
tus brings out more its political, the sacred historian its festal, side. 



180 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

versation. — in Theophylact's words, " that the entrance, indeed, to the 
marriage-feast is without scrutiny, for by grace alone we are all called, 
as well bad as good ; but the life of those that have entered, hereafter 
shall not be without scrutiny : — the King will make a very strict exam- 
ination of those who, having entered into the faith, shall be found in 
filthy garments " — a most needful caution, lest any should abuse the 
grace of God, and forget that while as regarded the past they were 
freely called, they were yet now called unto holiness. 

Thus much on the relation in which this parable stands to that re- 
corded by St. Luke. In the present, as compared with the last, we see 
how the Lord is revealing himself in ever clearer light as the central 
person of the kingdom, giving here a far plainer hint than there of the 
nobility of his descent. There he was indeed the son, the only and belov- 
ed one, of the householder ; but here his race is royal, and he appears 
himself at once as the king, and the king's son. (Ps. lxxii. 1.) This 
appearance of the householder, as the king, announces that the sphere in 
which this parable moves is the New Testament dispensation — is the 
kingdom, which was announced before, but was only actually present 
with the coming of the king. That last was a parable of the Old Tes- 
tament history ; even Christ himself appears there rather as the last and 
greatest of the line of its prophets and teachers, than as the founder of a 
new kingdom. In that, a parable of the law, God appears demanding 
something from men ; in this, a parable of grace, God appears more as 
giving something to them. There, he is displeased that his demands are 
not complied with — here, that his goodness is not accepted ; there he 
requires, here he imparts. And thus, as we so often find, the two 
mutually complete one another ; this taking up the matter, where the 
other left it. 

The two favorite images under which the prophets set forth the 
blessings of the new covenant, and of all near communion with God — 
that of a festival (Isai. xxv. 6, lxv. 13 ; Cant. v. 1), and that of a mar- 
riage* (Isai. lxi. 10, lxii. 5; Hos. ii. 19; Matt ix. 15; John iii. 29; 
Ephes. v. 32 ; 2. Cor. xi. 2) — are united and interpenetrate one another 



* The phrase iroieiv ydfiov, occurring Gen. xxix. 22 ; Tob. viii. 19 ; 1 Mace. ix. 
37, x. 58, (LXX.,) is rather, as also often in classical Greek, to celebrate the mar- 
riage feast than the marriage (see Matt. xxv. 10 ; Esth. ii. 18), and sometimes the 
notion of the marriage is altogether lost, and that of the festival alone remains : sc 
for instance. Esth. ix. 22, where the 7^01 are merely feastings ; not otherwise, 1 
think, should the word be understood at Luke xiv. 8, and at ver. 4 of the present 
parable. Singularly enough, exactly the reverse has happened with the Germais 
nochzeit, which signifying at first any high festival, is now only the festival of a 
marriage. These marriage festivities lasted commonly seven or fourteen days, 
f Gen. xxix. 27 ; Judg. xiv. 12 ; Tob. viii. 19.) 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON". 181 

In the marriage festival* here. There appears indeed this inconvenience, 
resulting from the inadequacy of things human to set forth things di- 
vine, that the members of the Church are at once the guests invited to 
the feast, and, in their collective capacity, constitute "the bride at whose 
espousals the feast is given. f But in the progress of the narrative the 
circumstances of the marriage altogether fall into the background ;$ 
the different conduct of the guests invited to the feast becomes the 
prominent feature of the narration. This parable, like the last, has its 
groundwork and its rudiments in the Old Testament (Exod. xxi.v 1 1 : 
Zeph. L 7, 8 ; Prov. ix. 1), and it entered quite into the circle of Jewish 
expectations, that the setting up of the kingdom of the Messiah should 
be accompanied with, and ushered in by, a glorious festival : at d else- 
where our Lord himself does not refuse to make use of the same image 
for the setting forth of the same truths. (Luke xxii. 18, 30.) It is true 
indeed that the marriage is spoken of there, and at Rev. xix. 7, as one 
that shall not take place till the end of the present age, while here the Lord 
speaks of it as already present ; but the two statements are easily recon- 
cilable, when we keep in mind how distinct the espousals and the actual 
marriage were held in the East, and contemplate his first coming as 
the time of his espousals, while not till his second coming will he lead 
home his bride. 

At a fitting time the king u sent forth his servants^ to call them that 
were bidden to the wedding" — we must presume, a numerous company, 
for in the corresponding parable of St. Luke, the giver of the feast, a pri- 
vate man as it would seem, '-bade many." Here then we may suppose 

* Vitringa {In Apocal., xix. 7) : Nuptiae ipsae figurant arctissimam Christi cum 
Ecclesia. unionem, fide utrinque data., et foederali contractu obsignatam, ad facien- 
dam spiritualem sobolem, quae orbem repleat. Epulum nuptiale adumbrat turn 
beneficia gratiae, quae vi justitiae Christi Ecclesiae ad satietatem et hilaritatem ex- 
hibentur. turn illorum beneficiorum communionem, turn denique laetitiam et festivi- 
tatem, quae cum fruitione bonorum gratiae conjungitur, et ex ea ad convivas hujug 
epuli redundat. 

f Augustine (In Ep. 1 Joli. Tract. 2) : Non quomodo in nuptiis carnalibus alii 
frequentant nuptias et alia nubit : in Ecclesia qui frequentant, si bene frequentant, 
sponsa fiunt. 

% This difficulty would be altogether escaped, if we understood the marriage as 
one between the Divine 'Word and the human Nature, — God and man united and 
making one Christ ; so Augustine and Gregory the Great {Horn. 38 in Evang..) 
have understood it, though certainly neither to the exclusion of the more obvious 
meaning suggested by such passages as Ephes. v. 21—32, according to which the 
marriage would be one between Christ and his Church. Gregory shows how well 
the two interpretations can be reconciled, saying, In hoc Pater regi filio nuptias 
fecit, quo ei per incarnationis mystcrium sanctam Ecclesiam sociavit, 

§ Technically vocatores. invitatores, K\-f)Topes, 5enrvoK\riTopes, i\4a.Tpoi. Sea 
Prov. ix. 3-5. 



182 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

still larger numbers to have been bidden, even as the maker of the feast 
was a greater person, and the occasion a more solemn one. (Compare 
Esth. i. 3-9.) This second invitation, or admonishment rather, is quite 
according to Eastern* manners. Thus Esther invites Hainan to a ban- 
quet on the morrow (Esth. v. 8), and when the time is actually arrived, 
the chamberlain comes to bring him to the banquet (vi. 14). Modern 
travellers testify to the same custom now of repeating the invitation to a 
great entertainment, at the moment when all things are in actual readi- 
ness ; so that there is no reason at all why with some we should make 
" them that were bidden" to mean them that were now to be bidden.* 

Indeed, deeper reasons than those that lie on the surface of the para- 
ble are against this ; for our Lord in assuming the guests to have been 
invited long before, would bring out that the new was not indeed new, 
but rather a fulfilment of the old : that he claimed to be heard, not as one 
suddenly starting up, and unconnected with all which had gone before 
him, but as himself the end of the law, that to which it all had been tend- 
ing, the birth with which the whole Jewish dispensation had been preg- 
nant, and which at length gave its meaning to all. When he says, ' ; to 
call tliem tliat were bidden]' 1 he teaches us, as he would fain have taught 
those who then heard him, that there was nothing sudden in the coming 
in of his kingdom, that its rudiments had a long while before been laid, 
that all which they clung to as precious in their past history was pro- 
phetic of blessings now actually present to themselves, f The invitation 
first went forth at the constitution of the Jewish nation as God's elect 
people, and ran through all their history. It was taken up and repeated 
by each succeeding prophet, as he prophesied of the crowning grace that 
should one day be brought to Israel in the actual presence in the midst 
of it of its Lord and King, and summoned the people to hold themselves 
in a spiritual readiness against that day. 

Yet they never did more than thus bid the guests, for they only spoke 
of good things to come. The actual calling of u them that were bidden " 
pertained not to them. John the Baptist was the first in whose time the 
kingdom was actually present, the wedding feast prepared, the king and 
the king's son manifested, and the long-invited guests summoned. By the 
first band of servants I should certainly now understand John and the 
apostles in their first mission — that which they accomplished during the 

* Thus Storr {Opusc. Acad., v. 1, p. 120) affirms robs KeK^rjfxcuovs may as well 
signify vocandos as vocatos ! Did not this refute itself, Luke xiv. 16, 17, would be 
decisive in the matter. 

•J- See in this view the admirable use which Tertullian makes of this parable, 
or rather of its parallel (Luke xiv. 16), arguing against Marcion (1. 4, c. 41), whose 
great aim was to cut loose the New Testament from the Old. So too Irenseus, 
Om, Har., 1. 4, c. 36. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SOW. 183 

lifetime of the Lord, his Incarnation being the true bridal of the earth 
and heaven.* His own share in summoning the guests, summoning 
them, that is, unto himself, " Come unto me," is naturally in the parable 
kept out of sight. It would have disturbed those proprieties which it 
was needful to observe, to have made the king's son himself a bearer of 
the invitation ; but yet did he in the reality of his infinite condescension 
sustain the double character, and he for whom the marriage was made, 
was content himself to be sent forth to call the guests thereunto. We 
observe upon this first occasion, there was no actual maltreatment of the 
servants sent out ; a general averseness from the message, and alienation 
from the messengers, — but as yet no positive outrage — nor was there 
such against the apostles during the lifetime of the Lord,f ner at the 
first against the Lord himself. It was simply • " they would not come" 
" Ye will not come to me, that ye may have life." 

"Again he sent forth other servants? The second sending forth of 
the servants describes that renewed invitation to the Jews which was 
made subsequent to the Crucifixion : of this, as was needful, nothing was 
said, for the parable would not bear it. It need not perplex us to find 
these spoken of as " other " servants, while, in fact, many of them were 
the same. In the first place, there were many other now associated with 
them, Stephen and Barnabas and Paul and a great company of preachers. 
Those, too, who were the same yet went forth as new men, full of the Holy 
Ghost, and with a somewhat altered message, not preaching generally a 
kingdom of God, but preaching now " Jesus and the resurrection ;" de- 
claring, which it may be observed they had not done before, that all things 
were ready — that all the obstacles which man's sin had reared up, God's 
grace had removed (Acts ii. 38,39; iii. 19-26; iv. 12); that in that 
very blood which they had impiously shed, there was forgiveness of all 
sins, and freedom of access to God. And let us not miss in the parable 

* These missions by the king of his servants to summon the guests (ver. 3, 4) 
have been sometimes differently understood. * Thus Origen applies them both to 
the sending of the prophets under the law ; Jerome makes no doubt that the first 
mission (ver. 3) is to be so understood, though he is more doubtful about the 
second. So too Gregory the Great {Horn. 38 in Evang.) understands it : Bis itaque 
servos ad invitandum misit, quia Incarnationem Unigeniti et per prophetas dixit 
futuram, et per Apostolos nunciavit factam. I am now persuaded however that 
Hilary's is in the main the true explanation; who {Com. in Matth., in loc.) thus ex- 
presses himself: Servi missi, qui invitatos vocarent, Apostoli sunt: eorum enim 
erat proprium, commone facere eos, quos invitaverant prophetee. Qui vero iterum 
cum pneceptorum conditione mittuntur, Apostolici sunt viri et successores Apos- 
tolorum. 

t The death of John cannot be here adduced ; for he by whose command ho 
was murdered was an Edomite, not therefore one of the invited guests at all— and 
moreover, it was for preaching the law, not the Gospel, that he died. 



184 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

or in its application the infinite grace which gives to the guests tht 
opportunity of coming to a better mind, and making good their first 
contempt. The king, as though he thought it possible that they deferred 
coming, as not being aware that the preparations were yet completed, or 
that some other misunderstanding had found place, instead of threaten- 
ing or rebuking, told his servants only to press the message with greater 
distinctness and instancy: " Tell them which are bidden" so tell them that 
they cannot mistake, that every anterior preparation is made,* and that 
now " all things are ready." And exactly thus was it with the apostles 
after the crucifixion ; how willing were they to look upon all that was 
past in the mildest possible light; thus Peter (Acts iii. 17), "And now, 
brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it;" — how did they refuse 
to dwell upon the past sin, urging rather the present grace ! 

But the servants upon this second mission fare worse than upon the 
first. The guests, when they heard the reiterated invitation, '-'-made 
light of it. and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his mer- 
chandise." Nor is this the worst. The careless disregard of the honor 
vouchsafed, which appeared from the beginning, and has grown in some 
to this contemptuous rejection of it, has ripened in others to an absolute 
hostility against the bringers of the message : " TJie remnant look his 
servants, and entreated tJiem spitefully, and sleiv them." So there are 
ever in the world two kinds of despisers of the G-ospel of God : some who 
take the trouble perhaps of saying, " I pray thee have me excused " — 
others in whom it excites feelings of a positive enmity. Those in the 
first class are again subdivided; for it is said that they '•'•went their 
ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise." The question 
naturally arises, Can we make a distinction here ? did the Lord intend a 
distinction? Perhaps if we understand of the first as one who went to 
his estate, which the word will perfectly justify, the distinction will come 
more clearly out. The first is the landed proprietor, the second the 
merchant ; the first would enjoy what he already possesses, the second 
would acquire what as yet is his only in anticipation. Exactly so, 
Luke xir, 18, 19, the guest who has bought a property and must needs 
go and see it, is one who has entered into the first condition ; the guest 
who would fain try his five* yoke of oxen, belongs to the second. The 
dangers of having and of getting, though cognate, are yet not at all the 
same. There is quite difference enough between them to account for the 
distinction. One of the guests when urged to come, turned to that which 



* " My oxen and my fallings are killed." This would be a sign of the immedi- 
ate nearness of the feast. Chardin ( Voy. en Perse, v. 4, p. 48) : On tue le matin le 
Inouton et l'agnoau qu'on mangera le soir . . . Les Persans croient que la meilleure 
chair est la plus fraiche tuee. (See Gen. xviii. 7, 8 ; xliii. 16 ; Prov. ix. 1-5.) 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SOK 185 

by his own or others' labor he had got — another to what he was hoping 
to get,* They are either those who are full, or are hoping to be full of 
this world ; and the woe which the Lord pronounced, Luke vi. 25, has 
come upon them ; for this fulness has prevented them from discovering 
their emptiness of things heavenly ; the divine hunger, the hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, has never been awakened in their souls. But 
u tlie remnant took his servant s, and entreated them spitefully^ and slew 
them" The oppositions to the G-ospel are not merely natural, they are 
also devilish. There are other evils in man's heart besides the worldli- 
ness of it, which are stirred up by the word of the truth. It wounds 
men's pride, it affronts their self-righteousness, and they visit on the 
bringers of it the hate they bear to itself. Three forms of outuige are 
enumerated here ; and how abundantly do the Acts of the Apostles, and 
much else in the later Scriptures, bear out all the three. They "took" 
or laid violent hands on, u his servants" (Acts iv. 3 ; v. 18; viii. 3); 
they "entreated them spitefully" (Acts v. 40; xiv. 5, 19; xni. 5; xxi. 
30; xxiii. 2); they " slew them" (Acts vii. 58; xii. 3; cf. Matt, 
xxiii. 34).f 

"But when tlie king heard thereof he ivas wroth." The insult was to 
him, and was iutended for him ; as in every case where an ambassador 
is outraged, it is his master whom it is intended that the blow shall 
reach. (2 Sam. x.) As such it was avenged ; for the king " sent forth 
his armies" that is, as some say, his avenging angels, the armies in 
heaven (Rev. xix. 14), the legions that are at his bidding (Matt. xxvi. 
53 ; 1 Kin, xxii. 19; 2 Sam. xxiv. 16).J or, it may be, the hosts of Rome§ 
(Dan. ix. 26) y which were equally " his armies" since even ungodly men 
are men of God's hand, by whom he executes vengeance on other 
wicked. (Thus Isai. x. 5, "0 Assyrian, the rod of mine anger." Thus 

* Bengel who is gifted with such wonderful skill, rem tangere acu, brings out 
the difference exactly so : Alius per falsam avrapKeiav, alius per cupiditateni acqui- 
rendi detentus. And Gerhard suggests, though with no great confidence, the 
same explanation (Harm. Evang., c. 153) : Quid si per abeuntes ad negotiationem 
intelligamus eos qui inhiant opibus adhuc acquirendis ; per abeuntes ad villam, 
qui male delectantur in opibus jam ante partis et acquisitis 1 

t To this part of the parable, 2 Chron. xxx. 10 supplies an interesting parallel. 
"When Hezekiah restored the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, he sent messengers 
throughout all the tribes, inviting all Israel to share in the solemn passover which 
he was about to keep, that is, bidding them to the feast. " So the posts passed 
from city to city . . . but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them." Yet as 
guests were brought in to the marriage-supper, so in this case, also, " divers hum- 
bled themselves and came to Jerusalem." 

£ Gregory the Great (Horn. 38 in Evang.) : Quid namque sunt ilia Angelorum 
agmina, nisi exercitus Regis nostri 1 

<) Solrenseus, Con. Hcer., 1. 4, c. 36, <) 6. 



186 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

too, Isai. xiii. 5; Ezek. xvi. 41; Jer. xxv. 9, " Nebuchadnezzar, my 
servant") In fact, the two explanations flow one into the other, for 
when God's wrath is to be excuted, the earthly and visible ministers of 
his judgments and the unseen armies of heaven are evermore leagued 
together. The natural eye sees only those, the spiritual eye beholds the 
other also behind. It is ever at such moments as it was with Israel of 
old. (1 Chron. xxi. 16.) The multitude, to whom the purged spiritual 
eye was wanting, beheld only the outward calamity, the wasting pesti- 
lence, but David lifted up his eye and saw the angel of the Lord, 
standing between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in 
his hand.* " The city of those murderers' 11 can of course be no other 
than Jerusalem, the central point of the Jewish theocracy. (Matt, xxiii. 
34, 35 ; Luke xiii. 33, 34 ; Acts vii. 39 ; xii. 2, 3.) There lies an awful 
threat in this appellation. It is their city, not any longer the city of 
the great King, who owns it no more for his own. With a similar 
threatening Christ says, " Your house is left unto you desolate " (Matt, 
xxiii. 38): "your house," not mine, for I no longer fill it with my 
presence. So to Moses God says, " Thy people have corrupted them- 
selves" (Exod. xxxii. 7); u thy people," not mine; for the covenant 
between him and them was suspended by their sin. 

" Then " (compare Acts xiii. 46) " saith he to his servants, The 
wedding is ready, but they ivhich were bidden were not worthy." Their 
un worthiness consisted in their rejection of the invitation, even as the 
worthiness of those who did find a place at the festival consisted — not 
in their previous state, for in that regard they were most unworthy of 
the honor of sitting down at the king's table, but in their acceptance of 
the invitation. " Go ye therefore into the highways,] and as many as ye 

* Even the heathen, could understand this. When Troy was perishing, the 
poet describes how the multitude saw but their Grecian enemies engaged in the 
work of destruction ; but to Eneas, when his Goddess mother had opened his eyes 
there appeared other foes ; to him 

Apparent dirae fades, inimicaque Trojae 
Numina magna Deum. 

■f It seems hard to determine whether these SiQoSoi are transitus or exitus 
(Passow gives both meanings, Durchgang and Ausgang) : whether the thorough- 
fares (see Ps. i. 3, LXX., where the word is used for channels of waters), or the 
outlets leading from the city (Grotius : Vise extra urbem ducentes), or such ai 
issued into its places and squares (Kuinoel : Compita viarum), or the points where 
many roads or streets meet; Chrysostom (Horn. 69 in Matth.) more than once sub- 
stitutes rpi68ovs. (Schleusner: Loca ubi plures platae concurrunt.) All these 
places have an equal fitness, in regard of being places of resort, where the servants 
might hope soon to gather a company. But we must not permit the English ex- 
pression, " highways," to make us think of places in the country as contradistin- 
guished from the town, whither the servants were sent ; the image throughout the 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 187 

shall find, bid to tlw marriage." Here the doctrine so hateful to Jewish 
ears (see Acts xxii. 21, 22), the calling of the Gentiles, and that by 
occasion of the disobedience of the Jews, is again plainly declared. By 
the breaking off of the natural branches of the olive, there shall be room 
made for the grafting in of the wild olive in their stead (Rom. xi.), — so 
Paul sets forth the same truth which here his Lord declares under the 
image of the exclusion of the guests, who in the natural order of things 
would best become the wedding, and were invited to it, and the reception 
of those gathered in from the highways in their stead. Compare Matt, 
viii. 10-12, of which this parable is only the ampler unfolding. 

Hereupon the servants " ivent out into tlie highzvays, and gatliered 
togetJwr all as many as tJiey found, both bad and good" In the spirit of 
this command, " Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached 
Christ unto them " there (Acts viii. 5) ; Peter baptized Cornelius and 
his company ; and Paul declared unto the men of Athens how God now 
commanded u all men every ivhere to repent." When it is said they 
gathered in "bad" as well as "good" — in which words there is a passing 
over from the thing signifying to the thing signified, since moral qualities 
would scarcely be attributed to the guests as such, — we are not to see 
here an explanation of the fact that one should hereafter be found at 
the festival without a wedding garment ; it is not to prepare the way for 
and to account for that fact, that these different qualities of the guests 
are mentioned. "Bad" here is not equivalent to "not having a ivedding 
garment" there ; on the contrary, many were "bad" when invited, who, 
through accepting the invitation, passed into the number of the "good;" 
for here the beautiful words of Augustine, concerning Christ's love to his 
Church, find their application, u he loved her when she was foul, that he 
might make her fair."* Neither may the terms "bad and good" and 
least of all the latter, be pressed too far; for speaking with strict 
accuracy, none are good till they have been incorporated into the body 
of Christ and are sharers in his Spirit. Yet, at the same time, few will 
deny that there are different degrees of moral life, even anterior to obe- 
dience to the call of the Gospel. There are "good" such, for instance, 
as Cornelius, or those Gentiles that were a law to themselves (Rom. ii. 

parable is of a city, in which the rich and great and noble, those who naturally 
would be selected for a king's guests, refuse to come to his banquet, whereupon 
the poor of the same city are brought in to share it. 

* Fcedam amavit ut pulcram faceret, — a thought which he pursues at length 
elsewhere (in 1 Ep. Joh. Tract., 9), among other things saying : Amavit nos prior 
qui semper est pulcher. Et quales amavit, nisi fcedos et deformes % Non ideo 
tamen ut foedos dimitteret, sed ut mutaret et ex deformibus pulchros faceret 
Quomodo erimus pulchri 1 amando eum qui semper est pulcher. Quantum in te 
crescit amor, tantum crescit pulchritudo, quia ipsa charitas est animse pulchritude 



188 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

14); and "bad," those who are so far gone in moral depravity, that id 
men there seems no hope of restoration for them;* — "such were some 
of you," says the apostle to the Corinthians, after enumerating sinners 
of the worst classes. The Gospel of Christ is the draw-net which brings 
within its ample folds both them who have been before honestly striving 
after a righteousness according to the law, and those who have been 
utterly dead in trespasses and sins. Its invitation some of both classes 
accept ; " The ivedding was furnislied ivith guests." 

This, which was the conclusion of the other and earlier spoken par- 
able (Luke xiv. 16), is only the first act in the present There is still 
another solemn act of judgment to follow. Hitherto the parable, with all 
the prophetic hints and glimpses which it gives of the wickedness of men 
and judgments of God, has been addressed to the chief priests and Pha- 
risees ; or generally to the Jewish nation, in so far as it cared not or as 
it hated to hear the glad tidings salvation. It is now for those who 
have accepted their portion therein, with an earnest warning also for 
them. Besides the separation between those who come and those who 
refuse to come, it shall be also tried at the last who among the actual 
comers have walked worthy of their vocation and who not ; and accord- 
ing to this rule there shall be a second sifting and separation. We 
have had the judgment on the avowed foe : that on the false friend is 
yet to find place. 

But however it was the servants' work to gather in the guests to 
the heavenly banquet, it is not their office here, any more than in the 
parable of the Tares, to separate finally and decisively between the wor- 
thy partakers and the unworthy intruders. And indeed how should it 
be ? for the garment which distinguishes these from those is worn, not 
on the body, but on the heart :f and only " the Lord trieth the hearts." 
We may presume that it pertained to the dignity of the king, that he 
should not appear at the festival till all were assembled, nor indeed till 
all had now occupied their places at the banquet ; for so much is im- 

* Jerome, on these "bad and good:" Inter ipsos quoque Ethnicos est diversitas 
infinita, quum sciamus alios esse proclives ad vitia et ruentes ad mala, alios ob 
honestatem morum virtutibus deditos. Augustine's conflict with the Pelagians 
would have hindered him from expressing himself exactly in these last words, and 
he will only allow these "good" to be minus mali than the others. Yet he too is 
most earnest against the abuse of these words, which should argue for allowing 
men to come to baptism without having faithfully renounced, as far as human eye 
could see, all their past ungodliness ; for that were to make the servants of the 
householder themselves the sowers of the tares. (De Fide et Oper., c. 17.) Am- 
brose (Exp. in Luc, 1. 7, c. 202) : Jubet bonos et malos introire ut bonos augeat, 
malorum affectum in meliora commutet : ut compleretur illud quod lectum est : 
Tunc lupi et agni simul pascentur. 

t Augustine : Vestis quippe ilia in corde, non in came, inspiciebatur. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 189 

plied in the word by which now the guests are described.* But then, 
when he " came in to see the guests, lie saw tliere a man which had not on 
a wedding garment}' 1 Among the guests, ranged in order and splendid- 
ly apparelled, his eye at once detected one who lacked the apparel that 
became a guest admitted to a royal festival. Him he addresses, as yet 
with a gentle compellation, for it was yet to be seen whether he could 
explain away his apparent contempt; ; - Friend, how earnest tlwu in 
hither, not having] a wedding garment . ? " But he could not ; " lie was 
speechless" 

But why could he not answer that it was unreasonable to expect of 
him, brought in of a sudden and without notice from the highways, to be 
furnished with such — that he was too poor to provide, — or that no time 
had been allowed him to go home and fetch, — such a garment? Some, 
willing to get rid of any semblance of harshness in the after conduct of 
the king, maintain that it was customary in the East, when kings or 
great personages made an entertainment, that costly dresses should be 
by them presented to the guests. Such a custom, they say, is here tacitly 
assumed, so that this guest could only have now appeared not having 
such a garment, because he had rejected it when offered to him ; and 
had thus both despised the grace done to him in the gift, and had also 
by that rejection plainly declared that he counted his ordinary work 
day apparel, soiled and stained as it may probably have been, sufficiently 
good in which to appear in the presence of the king, being guilty thus 
of a twofold offence. Ernesti, however, and others, have denied that 
any certain traces of such a custom are any where to be found, affirm- 
ing that the only notice which we have of any thing like it, is the mod- 
ern custom of clothing with a caftan those that are admitted into the 
presence of the Sultan. 

But, while it must be acknowledged that the passage (Judg. xiv. 13) 
often adduced in proof, fails to prove any thing : and that, perhaps, dis- 

* Tods avantiixivovs. In the Vulgate, Dlscumbentes; TTiclif, The men sitting at 
the meat. 

■f "We may observe that it is the subjective, and not the objective, particle of 
negation, which is here used, fifi and not ob — yA\ %x u>v ^vjxa ydfxov, " not having 
(and knowing that thou hadst not) the wedding garment;" with a consciousness 
that it was wanting. — The evSv/xa 7^01* is not exactly the l/xdnov w\x^ik6v of Plu- 
tarch (Amator. 10), for that is the garment not of the guests, but of the bride- 
groom ; nor yet the iafrfis wfKpiicf) of Chariton, 1, p. 6, which is that of the bride. 
(Becker's Chariklcs, v. 2, p. 467.) Yet there may lie under the use of this phrase, 
which seems at first fitter to set forth the array of the bridegroom than that of the 
invited guests, that the true adornment of each of these at the spiritual marriage 
is identical with that of the bridegroom : from him they have it ; it is of the same 
kind as that which he wears himself; for they who are rightly arrayed have put on 
the Lord Jesus Christ ; and as he is, so are they in the world. 



190 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

tinct evidence is not forthcoming of any such practice as that assumed 
yet we know enough of the undoubted customs of the East to make it 
extremely probable that presents of dresses were often distributed 
among the guests at a marriage festival, especially one like the present, 
celebrated with great pomp and magnificence ; so that our Lord's hear- 
ers, to whom those customs must have been familiar, would have un- 
consciously supplied the gap in the narration, and taken for granted 
such a gift going before, especially when they found so severe a pen- 
alty inflicted upon his guest, for a want which otherwise he could not 
well have avoided. "We know in the first place, that it was part of the 
state and magnificence of kings and wealthy persons in the East, to have 
great store of costly dresses laid up, as at the present day a great portion 
of their wealth is very commonly invested in numerous changes of 
costly apparel. (Job xxviii. 16; Isai. iii. 6; Jam. v. 2; 2 Kin. x. 22.)* 
Keeping this in mind, we need not suppose that the number of guests, 
however great, would have created any embarrassment. We know 
moreover that costly dresses were often given as honorable presents, 
marks of especial favor (Gen. xlv. 22 ; 1 Sam. xviii. 4 ; 2 Kin. v. 5 ; 
Dan. v. 7 ; Est. vi. 8 ; 1 Mace. x. 20) ; that they were then, as now, the 
most customary gifts; — and marriage festivals (Est. ii. 18) and other 
occasions of festal rejoicing (2 Sam. vi. 19) were naturally those upon 
which gifts were distributed with the largest hand. If the gift took the 
form of costly raiment, it would reasonably be expected that it should 
be worn at once, as part of the purpose of the distribution would else 
be lost, which was to testify openly the magnificence and liberality of the 
giver, and also to add to the splendor and glory of the festal time, — not 
to say that the rejection of a gift, or the appearance of a slight put upon 
it, is ever naturally esteemed as a slight and contempt not of that gift 
only, but also of the giver. f 

* The story told by Horace of the five thousand mantles which Lucullus, on ex- 
amining his wardrobe, found that he possessed, is well known ; and this extract 
from Chardin (Voy. en Perse, v. 3, p. 230, Langles' ed.), a traveller of whom all 
later inquirers into Eastern customs join in praising the accuracy and extent of in- 
formation, maybe accepted in proof that the number of the garments needed would 
have been readily at hand : On ne sauroit croire la de*pense que fait le roi de Perse 
pour ces presens-la.. Le nombre des habits qu'il donne est infini. On en tient 
toujours ses garde-robes pleines. On les tient dans les magazins separds par assort- 
iment. 

t So strongly is this felt, that we are not without example in the modern his- 
tory of tho East (and Eastern manners so little change that modern examples are 
nearly as good as ancient), of a vizier having lost his life, through this very failing 
to wear a garment of honor sent to him by the king. Chardin mentions the cir- 
cumstances ; — the officer through whose hands the royal robe was to be forwarded, 
out of spite sent in its stead a plain habit. The vizier would not appear in the city 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 191 

But in addition to the affront of rejecting the gift, supposing it to be 
granted that such a gift going before may be safely assumed, this guest 
was guilty of a further affront in appearing at the festival in unsuitable, 
probably in mean and sordid, apparel. Even with us there are occa- 
sions when such conduct would be felt as manifesting a serious lack of 
respect ; much more among the nations of antiquity, especially those of 
the East, where outward symbols have a significance so far greater than 
with us, would such an omission as that whereof this guest was guilty, 
be felt as a grievous affront and insult* to the person in whose honor 



arrayed in this, lest it should be taken as an evidence that he was in disgrace at 
court, and put on in its stead a royal habit, the gift of the late king, and in that 
made his public entry into the city. When this was known at court, they declared 
the vizier a dog, that he had disdainfully thrown away the royal apparel, saying, I 
have 110 need of Sha Sefi's habits. Their account incensed the king, who severely 
felt the affront, and it cost the vizier his life. (Burder's Orient. Liter., v. 1, p. 94. 
Cf. Herodotus, 1. 9, c. Ill, for an example of the manner in which the rejecting of 
a monarch's gift was resented.) — Olearius {Travels, p. 214), gives an account of 
himself, with the ambassadors whom he accompanied, being invited to the table of 
the Persian king. He goes on to say, " It was told us by the mehmandar, that we 
according to their usage must hang the splendid vests that were sent us from the 
king over our dresses, and so appear in his presence. The ambassadors at first re- 
fused ; but the mehmandar urged it so earnestly, alleging, as also did others, that 
the omission would greatly displease the king, since all other envoys observed such 
a custom, that at last they consented, and hanged, as did we also, the splendid 
vests over their shoulders, and so the cavalcade proceeded." This passage, besides 
its value as showing us how the rejection of the garment of honor, or rather the 
failing to appear in it, would be felt as an insult, clears away any difficulty which 
might have occurred to any from the apparent unfitness of the king's palace as a 
place for changing of apparel. In fact, there was strictly speaking no such chang- 
ing of apparel, for the garment of honor was either a vest drawn over the other 
garments, or a mantle hung on the shoulders. Schulz, in his Travels, describes 
that given to him, as " a long robe with loose sleeves, which hang down (for the 
arm is not put into them), the white ground of which is goat's hair, mixed with 
some silver, but the flowers woven in are of gold-colored silk;" and his account of 
the necessity of putting it on before appearing in the presence of the Sultan, agrees 
with that given by the earlier traveller. (Rosenmuller's Alte und Neue Morgenl., 
v. 5, p. 76.) 

* Irenseus then has exactly seized the right point when hr says (Con. Hcer., 1. 
4, c. 36, <j 6) : Eum, qui non habet indumentum, nuptiarum hoc est, contemptorcm. 
Compare with this the exceeding stress which Cicero lays, in his charges against 
Vatinius (In Vatin., 12, 13), on the fact of the latter having once appeared clad in 
black at a great and solemn festival (supplicatio) — how much of wanton indignity 
and insult he saw in it, both towards the giver of the feast, and also towards the 
other guests. " Who ever," he asks, " even in a time of domestic grief, appeared 
at a supper thus arrayed in black V and we learn from that passage, as from many 
others, that none but white garments, which, however, would afford great room for 
magnificence, were considered becoming for a festival. (See Becker's Charikles, 
v. 2, p. 469.) It was the same among the Hebrews, for one exhorting to continual 



192 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

the more splendid and becoming apparel ought to have been put on ; 
and, of course, the more honorable the person the more serious would be 
the offence. So that, though others have been forward to say something 
in this guest's behalf, — as that he could not help appearing as he did, or 
that his fault was after all but a slight one, — he did not feel that he had 
any thing to say for himself; u lie was speechless" or literally, his mouth 
was stopped, he was gagged,* with no plea to allege for his contemptu- 
ous behavior ; he stood self-condemned, and judgment therefore imme- 
diately proceeded against him. a Then said the king to tlie servants" 
or rather to the ministering attendants, " Bind him hand and foot, and 
take him away, and cast him into outer darkness." Within the palace 
was light and joy, but without it was cold and darkness ; — into this the 
unworthy guest, with no power of resisting the fulfilment of the decree, 
for his hands and feet were first bound, was to be cast — and there for 
him, under the sense of his shame, and loss and exclusion from the glo- 
rious festival, would be " weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

This brings the parable to an end according to the letter, yet is there 
much in this latter part which demands an accurate inquiry. When, 
it may first be asked, does the king come in to see, or to scrutinize, the 
guests ? Not certainly exclusively in the day of final judgment, though 
indeed most signally then. At every other judgment whereby hypo- 
crites are revealed, or self-deceivers laid bare to themselves or to others, 
the king enters in to see, or rather, diligently to regard,! the assembled 
guestsj — at every time of trial, which is also in its nature a time of sep- 
aration, a time when the thoughts of many hearts are laid bare; 
though for the day of the last judgment the complete and final separa- 



merriment and festal gladness exclaims, "Let thy garments be always white" 
(Eccles. ix. 8), that is, keep a continual feast ; — so we read that white robes were 
given to the souls under the altar (Rev. vi. 11), a pledge to them, that though kept 
waiting a while, they should yet in a little season be admitted to the marriage-sup- 
per of the Lamb ; and the bride is arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. (Rev. 
xix. 8.) 

* 'Erpi/Mafrr), from <pijx6s= iirio-TS/juov, a gag. Chrysostom admirably explains it, 
KareKpivev kavr6v. Such gags (in Latin, camfts) were actually in use, not merely for 
beasts, but sometimes for rebellious slaves, or criminals on their way to execution. 
(Sec Schoettgen's Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 241, and the Partem. Greed, Oxf. 1636, p. 41.) 
The word is used in its literal sense, 1 Tim. v. 18. 

f Qedo/xai, which is the word here, Schleusner explains : Fixis ac intentis oculis 
aspicio et intueor ad rem aliquam considerandam et dijudicandam. In the Vul- 
gate, Ut viderct discumbentes : the old Italic had better, Ut inspiceret discumben- 
tes. 

X Augustine : Intrat Deus judicio, qui foris manet tolerando : and the Auct. 
Oper. Imperf. : Tunc regem ingredi, quando Deus tentat homines, ut appareat 
quantum quisque virtutis habeat, et an loco, quern in Ecclesia tenet, dignus sit. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 19<j 

tion is of course reserved, and then all that has been partially fulfilling 
in one and another will be completely fulfilled in all. 

Some would not leave out of sight the singleness of the guest with* 
out the wedding garment, but seek to hold it fast in the interpretation. 
They have suggested that Judas may perhaps, be immediately pointed 
out.* It is certainly not impossible that a gracious Lord, who suffers 
none to perish without warning, may have meant a merciful warning 
for him here. This, at any rate, were a more tolerable supposition 
than that of Vitringa, Cocceius, and others,! of the historico-prophet- 
ical school, to wit, that it is the man of sin, by whom they understand 
the Pope. It is hardly, however, probable that any single person is in- 
tended, but rather under this one a great multitude : for the "few" 
presently said to be "chosen" in comparison to the "many called" 
would seem to imply that there had been a great sifting. Why these 
many excluded should be here represented as a single person has been 
explained in different ways. Townson instances it as an example of 
what he happily calls u t/te lenity of supposition" which finds place in 
our Lord's parables ; as he instances in like manner there being but one 
servant who failed to turn his lord's money to account. Gerhard gives 
an ingenious reason, — that "if many had been thrust out from the mar- 
riage, the nuptial festivities would have seemed to have been disturbed." 
But he is on a truer track, when he observes how the fact of his being- 
but one, brings the matter home to every man : u So diligent and exact 
will be the future scrutiny, that not so much as one in all that great, 
multitude of men, shall on the last day escape the piercing eyes of the: 
Judge."J Nor is there any difficulty in thus contemplating the whole 
multitude of evil-doers as a single person. For as the righteous are one- 
being gathered under their one head, which is Christ, so the congrega 
tion of the wicked are one, being gathered also under their one head,, 
which is Satan. The mystical Babylon is one city no less than the 



* Thus Pseudo-Athanasius (De Parab. Script.), and in later times "Weisse 
(Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 114). 

t As Gurtler, Syst. Thevl. Proph., p. 676. He finds a confirmation of this 
view in the fact, that the man is addre&ed as croupe : Antichristus singulariter est 
eroupos, vicarium illius se venditans, et solio ejus solium nequitiae associans ! — The 
Jews have a curious tradition about Esau, who is their standing type of Antichrist, 
that he will be such a guest thrust out from the kingdom of God. It is found in the 
Jerusalem Talmud, and is as follows : " Esau the wicked will veil himself with his 
mantle, and sit among the righteous in Paradise in the world to ccue ; and the 
holy blessed God will draw him and bring him out from thence, which is the sense 
of those words, Obad. 4, 6." 

$ Cajetan the same : Subtilis discretio in tanta. multitudine describitur ; quia 
enim ita omnes Deus videt ut singulorum singillatim curam habeat, ide& unus da* 
fccribitur visus Lomo. 

13 



194 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

mystical Jerusalem. There is a kingdom of darkness as well as a 
kingdom of God.* 

But concerning the wedding garment itself, it has been abundantly 
disputed what spiritual grace or gift he lacked, who was lacking in this. 
It is well known that the Romanists have been eager to press this pas- 
sage into their service, in the controversy concerning the relative value 
of faith and charity. But when they assert that it must have been 
charity in which this guest was deficient, and not faith, — for that he had 
faith, since he would not have been present at the feast at all unless 
externally a believer, they are merely taking advantage of the double 
meaning of the word faith, and playing off the occasional use of it as a 
bare assent to the truth, against St. Paul's far deeper use of the word, — 
and this most unfairly, for they must know that it is only in the latter 
sense of the word that any would attribute this guest's exclusion to his 
wanting faith. "Were it needful to decide absolutely for one or other of 
these interpretations of the wedding garment, I would far sooner accept 
the other, as infinitely the deepest and truest, since the flower may be 
said to be contained in the root, but not the root in the flower, and so 
charity in faith, but not faith in charity.f There is however no need 
to decide for either interpretation, so as to exclude the other. The great 
teachers in the early Church did not put themselves in contradiction to 
one another, when some of them asserted that what the intruder was de- 
ficient in was charity, and others faith ; nay, the same writer ,J without 



* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxi. 4) : Levatus est de convivio et missus in poenas 
nescio quis homo in tarn magna turba recumbentium. Sed tamen Dominus volens 
ostendere unum ilium hominem, unum corpus esse quod constat ex multis, ubi 
jussit enm projici foras, et mitti in debitas pcenas, subjecit continud, Multi enim 
sunt vocati, pauci verd electi . . . Qui sunt electi, nisi qui remanserunt 1 Projecto 
.uno, electi remanserunt. Quomodo, projecto uno de multis, pauci electi nisi in illo 
uno multi 1 See also Con. Don., post Coll., c. 20. We have just the reverse of this 
I Cor. ix. 24. There the whole number of the elect are included in the " one that 
■receiveth the prize." 

f Ignatius (Ad Ephes., 14) calls the twain, apxh fays Kal reAos • apxh V*v vicrTit, 
rehos 8e £70(71-77. 

^ Thus Ambrose (De Fide, 1. 4, c. 1) speaks of the nuptiale fidei vestimentum 
-while elsewhere (De Pewit., 1. 1, c. 6) he says : Hie rejicitur qui non habet ves- 
tern nuptialem, hoc est, amictum caritatis, velamen gratiae ;— and again uniting hia 
two former expositions (Exp. in Imc, 1. 7. c. 204) : Vestem nuptialem, hoc est, 
fidem et caritatem. In the same way Augustine (Serm. xc.) joins them both : 
Habete fidem cum dilectione. Ista est vestis nuptialis. The Auct. Oper. Impcrf. : 
Nuptiale vestimentum est fides vera qua3 est per Jesum Christum et justitiam ejus ; 
see also Basil (on Jsai. ix.) for a like interpretation. Yet no one would den," the 
other to be the side upon which the Fathers more frequently contemplate the wed- 
ding garment, as charity, or sanctity. Thus Irenseus ( Con. Hccr., 1. 4, c. 36, § 6) : Qu 
vocati ad csenam Dei, propter malam conversationem non perceperunt Spiritum 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 195 

feeling that there was aught needing to be reconciled, would in one place 
give the one interpretation, and elsewhere the other. For what this 
guest lacked was righteousness, both in its root of faith and its flower of 
charity. He had not, according to the pregnant image of Paul, here 
peculiarly appropriate, — "put on Christ;" — in which putting on of 
Christ, both faith and charity are included, — faith as the power putting 
on, charity or holiness as the thing put on. # By faith we recognize a 
righteousness out of and above us, and which yet is akin to us, and 
wherewith our spirits can be clothed, which righteousness is in Christ, 
who is the Lord our Righteousness. And this righteousness by the 
appropriative and assimilative power of faith we also make ours ; we are 
clothed upon with it, so that it becomes, in that singularly expressive 
term, our habit,] — the righteousness imputed has become also a right- 



Sanctum ; and Hilary ; Vestitus nuptialis est gloria Spiritfts Sancti et candor habi- 
tus coelestis, qui bona? interrogations confessione susceptus usque in caetum regni 
coelorum immaculatus et integer reservatur. So Gregory the Great, Horn. 38 in 
Evang. Yet Grotius affirms too much when he says : Ita veteres magno consensu 
ad hunc locum. And this is the predominant, though not I think the exclusive, 
sense given to it in our Exhortation to the Holy Communion ; with which compare 
Chrysostom, Horn. 3, in Ephes., quoted by Bingham {Christ. Antt., b. 15, c. 4, § 2). 

* Even so Gerhard, to whose most useful collection of passages I have been 
very much indebted in this parable, explains it : Vestis nuptialis Christus est, qui 
et sponsus et cibus est in his nuptiis. Christum autem induimus turn fide ejus 
meritum apprehendendo, ut nuditas nostra coram Dei judicio ipsius justitia tan- 
quam pretiosa veste tegatur, turn sanctd vita canversatione, qua ipsius vestigiis in- 
sistimus (Rom. xiii. 14), cum Christus non solum nobis datus sit in donum, sed 
etiam propositus in exemplum ;— and Jerome's words are remarkable : Yestem 
nuptialem, hoc est, vestem supercoelestis hominis, — as he explains the sordid gar- 
ment as veteris hominis exuvias. — One might here bring forward as illustrative a 
passage from the Shepherd of Hermas, 1. 3, sim. 9, c. 13. He sees in his vision some 
virgins, and asks who they are ; it is answered that they represent the chief Christian 
virtues : Spiritus sancti sunt, non alitor enim homo potest in regnum Dei intrare nisi 
has induerint eum veste sua. Etenim nil proderit tibi accipere nomen filii'Dei, nisi 
etiam et vestem earum acceperis ab eis. 

f This image runs remarkably through the whole of Scripture, its frequent use 
being a witness for its peculiar fitness. Thus we are bidden to put on the Lord 
Jesus Christ (Rom. xiii. 14), to put off- the old, to put on the new, man (Col. iii. 
10 ; Ephes. iv. 22), to put on the various pieces of the panoply of God (Ephes. vi. 
13^16 ; 1 Thess. v. 8) ; baptism is a putting on of Christ (Gal. iii. 27). See fur- 
ther, Rom. xiii. 12; Ezek. xvi. 10; Isai. lxi. 10; Sirac. vi. 31; and Schoettgen 
{Ilor. Heb., v. 1, p. 699) shows that the mystery of putting on a righteousness from 
above was not wholly hidden from the Jews— many of the passages which ho 
quotes being truly remarkable. The figure has passed on to the heavenly king- 
dom; as grace is put on here, so glory there. "He that overcometh, the same 
shall be clothed in white raiment." (Rev. iii. 5 ; iv. 4; vi. 11 ; vii. 9; 2 Esd. ii. 39, 
45.) In the book of Enoch these garments are called vestes vitae. See Eisenmen- 
qer's Entd. JvAenthum (v. 2, p. 310), where it is said of the angels, that according 



196 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

eousness infused, and is in us charity or holiness, or more accurately 
still, constitutes the complex of all Christian graces as they abide in the 
man and show themselves in his life. 

The wedding garment then is righteousness in its largest sense, the 
whole adornment of the new and spiritual man, — including the faith 
without which it is impossible to please God, and the holiness without 
which no man shall see him, or, like this guest, shall only see him to 
perish at his presence: — it is the faith which is the root of all graces, the 
mother of all virtues, and it is likewise those graces and those virtues 
themselves. Let us contemplate this guest as a self-righteous person, 
who is making and trusting in a righteousness of his own, instead of 
believing in a righteousness of Christ's, imputed and imparted, — or let 
us see in him a more ordinary sinner, who with the Christian profession 
and privileges is yet walking after the lusts of the flesh in unholiness 
and sin, in either case the image holds good ; — he is rejecting something, 
even the true robe of his spirit, which has been freely given to him at his 
baptism,* and which if he has since let go, he may yet, on the strength 
of that gift, freely at any moment claim ; — he is a despiser, counting 
himself good enough merely as he is in himself, in the flesh and not in 
the spirit, to appear in the presence of God. But a time arrives when 
every man will discover that he needs another covering, another array 
for his soul. It is woe unto him, who like this guest only discovers it 
when it is too late to provide himself with such ; and then suddenly 
stands confessed to himself in all his moral nakedness and defilement. 
It was the king's word which struck the intruder speechless — so it will 
be the light of God shining round and shining in upon the sinner, which 
will at the last day reveal to him all the hidden things of his heart, all 
that evil, of the greater part of which he has hitherto wilfully chosen to 
be ignorant, but of which now he can remain ignorant no longer. We 
may well understand how he also, like the unworthy guest, will be 
speechless, that however forward he may have been in other times to 
justify himself, in that day his mouth will be stopped; he will not even 
pretend to offer any excuse, or to plead any reason why judgment should 
not proceed against him at once. 

The ministering attendants here, who are different both in name and 
office from the servants who invited and brought in the guests.f can be 



to the Jewish tradition they strip off the grave-clothes from every one who enters 
Paradise, and clothe him in white and glistering raiment. 

* Seo one of Schleiermacher's Taufreden, in his Predigten, v. 4, p. 787. 

t Those were dov\oi, these are Sidicovot. (John ii. 5, 9.) They here appear as 
Lidors— that name, from ligare, having allusion to this very function of binding tho 
hands and feet of condemned criminals. 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON". 197 

no other than the angels who " shall gather out of his kingdom all things 
that offend, and them that do inquity." (Matt. xiii. 41, 49 ; Luke xix. 24.) 
These are bidden to "bind him hand and foot" which by some is made to 
mean that upon the sinner the night is come, in which no man can work, 
that for him all opportunity of doing better is gone by ; though I should 
rather see in it the sign of the helplessness to which in a moment every 
proud striver against God is reduced.* The hands by the aid of which 
resistance, the feet by whose help escape, might have been meditated, are 
alike deprived of all power and motion. (Acts xxi. 11.) In the command 
" Take him away" is implied the sinner's exclusion from the Church 
now glorious and triumphant in heaven, the perfected kingdom of God.f 
(Matt. xiii. 48 ; 2 Thess. i. 9.) Nor is the penalty merely privative : it 
is not only this loss of good, but also the presence of evil.J They shall 
" cast him into outer darkness ;" so called because it lies wholly beyond 
and external to God's kingdom of light and joy.§ For as light is con- 
templated as the element of that kingdom, so whatever is beyond and 
without that kingdom is darkness — the '-'•outer darkness" girdling round 
the kingdom of light, and into which all fall back, who refusing to walk 
in the light of God's truth, fail to attain in the end to the light of ever- 
lasting life. (Compare Wisd. xvii. 21 ; xviii. 1.) On the words following, 
•' Tlwre shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" there has been occasion 
to say something already. || 



* H. de Sto. Victore : Ligatis manibus et pedibus, id est, ablata penitus potes- 
tate bene operandi : but I rather follow Grotius : Notat rb &/iaxov kclL rb &^vktov 
irrogati divinitus supplicii. Taking it in this meaning, Zech. v. 8 will supply an 
instructive parallel. The woman whose name is " "Wickedness" sitting securely 
in the ephah, the great measure of God's judgments, which she has filled, is forcibly 
thrust down into it ; and the mouth of it is then stopped with the huge mass of 
lead, that she may never raise herself again. Jerome (in loc.) : Angelus praecipi- 
tem misit in medium amphorae . . . ac ne forte rursum elevaret caput, et sua ini- 
quitate et impietate gauderet, talentum plumbi in modum gravissimi lapidis mittit 
in os amphorae, ut Impietatem in medio opprimat atque concludat, ne quo modo 
possit erumpere. The women with wings, who bear away the ephah, will further 
answer to the servants here ; and the outer darkness here to the land of Shinar, 
the profane land, whither the vessel and its burden are borne. The whole vision 
too (v. 5-11) has its similarity to this parable ; for that and this speak alike of the 
cleansing of the Church by judgment-acts of separation upon the sinners in it. 

f It is interesting to compare Zeph. i. 7, 8 : :£ The Lord hath prepared a sacri- 
fice, ho hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in .the day of the Lord's 
sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king's children, and all such as are 
clothed with strange apparel." (ivSedvixtvovs evSv/xaTa a.K\6rpia. LXX.) 

X Augustine, Serm. 31, c. 5. 

$ Peter Lombard (1. 4, dist. 50) : Exteriores tenebrae erunt, quia tunc peccato- 
res penitus erunt extra Deum . . . Secludentur penitus a luce Dei. 

|| Meuschen (N. T. ex Talm. Must., p. 106) quotes a Jewish parable as bearing 



198 THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 

The parable terminates like that of the Laborers in the Vineyard 
with that weighty saying. " Many are catted, but few are chosen? which 
refers not merely to the expulsion of this unworthy guest ; but in the 
a catted " and not " chosen " must be included those others also, that did 
not so much as seem (which he had done) to embrace the invitation, and 
who expiated their contumacy in the destruction of themselves and their 
city. And these words do but state a truth which had long before been 
finding its fulfilment in the kingdom of God, which, alas ! is always 
accomplishing there. They were fulfilled in the history of that entire 
generation which went out of Egypt — they were all u called " to a king- 
dom, yet were not in the end " chosen " to it, since with most of them 
God was not well pleased, and they died in the wilderness. (1 Cor. x. 
1-10 ; Heb. iii. 7-19 ; Jude 5.) They were fulfilled on a smaller scale 
in those twelve to whom it was given first to see the promised land — two 
only drew strength and encouragement from that sight, and they only 
were " c/wsen " to inherit it. They found their fulfilment in the thirty 
and two thousand of Gideon's army : these all were " called " but only 
three hundred were found worthy, and in the end " c/wsen" to be heplers 
in and sharers of his victory, — such a sifting and winnowing away had 
there been before. (Judg. vii.) They were fulfilled too in a type and 
figure, when Esther alone of all the maidens that were brought together 
to the king's place was " chosen " by him, and found lasting favor in his 
sight. (Esth. ii.)* 



some resemblance to the present. It is of a king who invited his servants to a 
festival : — some of these prepared and adorned themselves, and waited at the door 
till he should pass in, others said there would be time enough for this, as the feast 
would be a long while in preparing, and so went about their ordinary business. 
The latter, when the king demanded suddenly the presence of his guests, had no 
time to change their apparel, but were obliged to appear before him in sordid gar- 
ments as they were ; — he was displeased, and would not allow them to taste of his 
banquet, but made them stand by while the others feasted. — But if this can be said 
to resemble any of our Lord's parables, it is evidently the Ten Virgins, with which 
it should be compared, and not this. 

* H. de Sto. Victore (De Arrhd Animce) makes excellent application of Esther's 
history to the matter in hand : Vide quam multse electae sunt, ut una eligeretur, ilia 
scilicet quae occulis Regis formosior et ornatior cseteris videretur. Ministri Regis 
multas eligunt ad cultum, Rex ipse unam eligit ad thalamum. Prima electio mul- 
tarum facta est, secundum Regis praeceptionem, secunda electio unius facta est, 
secundum Regis voluntatem . . . Rex summus Regis filius venit in hunc mundum 
(quem ipse crcaverat) desponsare sibi uxorem electam, uxorem unicam, uxorem nup- 
tiis regalibus dignam. Sed quia hunc Judse humilitatis forma apparentem recipero 
contempsit, abjccta est. Et missi sunt ministri Regis, Apostoli videlicet, per totum 
mundum congrcgare animas, etadducere ad civitatem Regis, id est. ad SanctamEc- 
clesiam . . . Multi ergo vocati intrant per fidem Ecclesiam, et ibi Sacramenta Christi 
quasi quaedam unguenta ct antidota ad reparationem et ad ornatum animarum pne- 



THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON. 199 

parata accipiunt. Sed quia ore veritatis dicitur, Multi sunt vocati, pauci vero electi, 
non omnes qui ad hunc cultum sunt admissi, ad regnum sunt eligendi ; nisi tantum 
ii, qui sic student se per ista mundare et excolere, ut c&m ad Regis praesentiam 
introducti fuerint, tales inveniantur, quos ipse magis velit eligere quam reprobare, 
Vide ergo ubi posita es, et intelliges quid facere debes. Posuit enim te Sponsus 
tuus in triclinio, ubi mulieres ornantur, varia pigmenta et diversas species dedit, 
cibosque regios de mensa sua ministrari tibi pnecepit, quidquid ad sanitatem ; 
quidquid ad refectionem, quidquid ad reparandam speciem, quidquid ad augendum 
decorem valere potest, tribuit. Cave ergo ne ad colendam teipsam negligens sis v 
ne in novissimo tuo, ciim in conspectu sponsi hujus reprsesentata fueris, indigna 
(quod absit) ejus consortio inveniaris. Praepara te, sicut decet sponsam Regis, et 
sponsam Regis coelestis, sponsam sponsi immortalis. 



xni. 

THE TEN VIRGINS. 

Matthew xxv. 1-13. 

The circumstances of a marriage among the Jews, so far at least as 
they supply the groundwork of the present parable, are sufficiently well 
known, and have been abundantly illustrated by writers on Jewish 
antiquities ; and indeed no less through the accounts given by modern 
travellers in the East, — for the customs alluded to hold in full force to 
the present day, and form as important a part of the nuptial ceremony 
as they did in ancient times. The bridegroom, accompanied by his 
friends ("the children of the bride-chamber," Matt. ix. 15; "the friends 
of the bridegroom" John iii. 29; see Judg. xiv. 11), goes to the house 
of the bride, and brings her with pomp and gladness (1 Mace. ix. 37-39) 
to his own home, or occasionally, should that be too narrow to receive 
the guests, to some larger apartment provided for the occasion. She is 
accompanied from her father's house by her young friends and com- 
panions* (Ps. xlv. 15), while other of these, the virgins of the parable, at 
some convenient place meet and join the procession, and enter with the 
rest of the bridal company into the hall of feasting.f Such seems to me 
the exactest account of the ceremony, though by some the circumstances 
which supply the groundwork of the parable are given somewhat differ- 
ently. They describe the custom to be as follows : — the virgins meet 
the bridegroom, not as he is returning with, but as he is going to fetch, 
the bride ; and accompany him first unto her home, and only after that 



* The irapbtvoi kraiou of Pindar, Pyth. 3. 

t See "Wolf's latest Journal, p. 174, in addition to the accounts given by earlier 
travellers and quoted by Harmer and Burder. Bingham {Antt. b. 22, c. 4, § 7) 
shows the importance which was attached among the early Christians to the lead- 
ing home of the bride— so that without it the marriage in some legal points of 
view was not considered as completed. 



\ 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 201 

to his own. But this supposition has everything against it; besides 
being inaccurate in itself, and needlessly complicating the parable, it 
also considerably weakens its moral force ; for the parable is certainly 
meant to leave on our minds the impression that the joining of the 
bridal company, for the purpose of passing in with it to the- house of 
feasting, was a swift and momentary thing, to be done upon the instant,, 
and of which if the opportunity were once lost, it could not be recovered. 
Such would not be the case, if there were this going first for the bride, 
and only then — after a considerable pause and delay, which would ha^e 
naturally taken place at her house, — a leading of her home to her future 
dwelling. Neither can it be replied to obviate this objection, that per- 
haps the nuptial feast was celebrated at the house of her parents »nd 
friends, for this was as much contrary to all the customs of the Jews 
(see John ii. 10) as of the Greeks,* and such a supposition would 
seriously affect the parable in its spiritual application.! 

The marriages in the East taking place of old, as they do now, 
invariably at night, hence the constant mention of lamps and torches 
carried by the friends and attendants \\ therefore we are told here that 
these virgins "took their lamps" (Cf. 2 Esdr. x. 2.) These, however, 
do not appear to have had the same religious significance which they 
had in the Greek and Roman marriages,^ or even in those of the early 

* See Becker's Charikles, v. 2, p. 468, in proof that the celebration of the mar- 
riage in the bridegroom's house and not in the bride's, was at least the rule. 

f One would not lay any stress on the fact that some of the earliest versions 
read, " went forth to meet the bridegroom and the bride;" since this reading has 
been universally rejected, — except as it gives an evidence of the light in which the 
circumstance was looked at by some, who probably were familiar with the cere- 
mony as it actually took place in Palestine or the neighboring countries. This 
extract from Hughes' Travels in Sicily, fyc. (v. 2, p. 20), confirms the view first 
given, in so far as we can argue back from the modern custom to the ancient : " We 
went to view the nocturnal procession which always accompanies the bridegroom 
in escorting his betrothed spouse from the paternal 'roof to that of her future hus- 
band. This consisted of nearly one hundred of the first persons in Joannina, with 
a great crowd of torch-bearers, and a band of music. After having received the lady 
they returned, but were joined by an equal number of ladies, who paid this com- 
pliment to the bride." These " ladies" evidently answer to the virgins of our para- 
ble, and they join the procession, not till the bridegroom with his friends have 
received the bride at her father's house, and are escorting her to her new abode. 

X Thus, Rev. xviii. 23, the cpus X&xvov and the <pu>v)} w/xeptov koL vvntyns arc join- 
ed together. 

§ Among the Greeks and Romans torches were in chiefest use. Thus Catul- 
lus, Ejrithal., 98 : Yiden' % faces Aureas quatiunt comas ; and again : Maim Pine- 
am quate tajdam; so Apuleius, 10: Veluti nuptiales epulas obitmae dominae, cor- 
uscis facibus praelucebant ; and Euripides ; vv/Mpucal \a/j.Trddes. Cf. Backer's 
Charikles, v. 2, p. 465. Among the Jews lamps fed with oil were more common 
The early Christians seem to have used indiscriminately either, as the expressions, 



202 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

Christians ; but were in use, partly as being actually needed, partly as 
adding to the splendor of the scene. That the virgins should be ten in 
number is not accidental : — this number formed a company, which a less 
\ number, according to the Jewish notions, would not have done.* Of 
course the first question for the interpreter of the parable will be, Who 
are meant by these virgins ? There are two mistakes to which the word 
has given rise. There is first theirs, who thus argue, All are described 
as virgins : all, therefore, belong at the inmost centre of their life unto 
Christ. Some, it is true, were found unready at the last moment, and 
therefore suffered loss (1 Cor. iii. 13), even a long deferring of their 
blessedness. Yet the name with which the Lord has honored all gives 
assurance that none were ultimately excluded from the kingdom of 
heaven and the final salvation. They who take this view of the case 
of the foolish virgins, in general connect it with the doctrine of the 
thousand years' reign of Christ on the earth and a first resurrection. 
From the blessedness of these they sould be shut out for the unreadi- 
ness in which they were found, whether at the hour of their death, or at 
Christ's second coming ; they should be thus shut out because of their 
imperfections, and the much that remained in them unmortified and 
unpurified still, which needed therefore the long and painful purging of 
this exclusion, and of the dreadful persecutions to which all who were 
thus left out should be exposed. But the root of the matter being in 
them, they did not forfeit every thing, nor fall short of the final bliss of 
heaven. f There might be an argument in favor of this view, drawn 

faculse nuptiales, lucemse conjugates, denote. It is only in later Greek, that Ka/j.- 
ir<Ls came to signify not a torch or link, — but as here it would seem, a lamp fed 
with oil, which would at an earlier time have been expressed by \\>xvos or e'AAu- 
%viov. (See Passow, s. v. \afiirds.) Yet the mention of oil would not of itself 
exclude the possibility that these also were torches. For Elphinstone (Hist, of 
India, v. 1, p. 333), has noted, " The true Hindu way of lighting up is by torches 
held by men, who feed the flame with oil from a sort of bottle [which would answer 
to the ayyeiov here] constructed for the purpose." 

* Thus it was ruled that wherever there were ten Jews living in one place, 
there was a congregation, and there a synagogue ought to be built. Much more 
on the completeness of the number ten may be found collected by Vitringa, De. 
Synagoga, p. 232, seq., and in Bahr's Symbolik d. Mos. Cultus, v. 1, p. 175. 

t Thus Poiret (Divin. (Econom., 1. 4, c. 12, § 18, v. 2, p. 376) : Illi qui tempore 
Adventtis in statu quidem gratiae versabuntur, at multis simul imperfectionibus, 
multisque negligentiis implicati, quas hue usque nondum correxerint nee abluerint, 
hi inquam a regno glorioso Christi in terra, dum mille anni periodi hujus effluent, 
excluai, portam sibi obserari videbunt. Itaque foris relinquentur in tenebris pur* 
gationis, eo rumque beatitudo ad Resurrectionem usque generalem et post annos 
mille regni Christi atque Sanctorum differetur. Hoc ipsum satis apertfc docet 
Parabola Virginum fatuarum. Videmus enim eas ob negligentiam suam a convivio 
ttuptiali fuisse oxclusas, etiamsi et Virgines fuerint^et lampadem fidei habuerint, 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 203 

from the circumstance of these foolish being styled virgins as well as the 
others, if otJiers sometimes undertook the office of welcoming the bride- 
groom, and yet the Lord ha$ chosen to give that appellation to tliese, and 
to specify tliem as virgins. But seeing that to such the task in the 
natural order of things appertained, there is no weight in the argument 
derived from the title which they bear. 

The second error is one of which Chrysostom is the chief champion. 
He, taking the title " virgins 11 in the literal, while every thing else is 
taken in a figurative sense, limits the application of the parable to those 
who had made a profession of outward virginity,* instead of seeing that 
the virginity here is the profession of a pure faith, the soul guiltless of 



etDominum invocaverint. Janua enim jam clausa nunquam iterum aperiebatur dum 
hoc tempus durabat ; quoniam commotio, quae hoc in mundo futura est antequam 
finis ejus ac periodorum adveniat, per quam Deus hoc in mundo et in omnibus 
quae ibidem adsunt, mutationem banc gloriosam operabitur (quae veluti janua erit 
ac introductio in regnum ejusdem) non nisi semel futura est. Adhuc semel, inquit, 
et movebo caelum et terrain ; omnesque qui turn temporis per puritatem perfectam 
ad gloriam adipiscendam idonei erunt, impressionibns divinae bujus motionis recep- 
tis mutabuntur : at post hoc tempus ad Resurrectionem generalem usque, nulla 
nova commotio aut mutatio fiet. Tunc enim aderit dies quietis naturae ac creatu- 
rarum omnium quae in eandem jam erunt introductae. Abbinc vero oportebit, ut 
Virgines fatuae, et quicunque nondum veste nuptiali fuerint induti, JEtemitatem 
ipsam exspectent. Neque enim probabile videtur Virginibus istis negligentibus, 
in quibus tamen tot jam erant dispositiones bonae pariterque iis, qui eo tempore 
nondum rite parati, bona tamen initia jam fecerant, aeternum pereundum esse : sed 
nee probabile est quamcumque illi, post januam semel clausam, praeparationem 
sint adhibituri, Christum iterum ex quiete sua exiturum, et in gratiam eorum 
novam crisin ac separationem aliquam peculiarem in natura instituturum esse. 
Yon Mayer (Blatter fur holiere Wahrheit, v. 7, p. 247) interprets the parable in the 
same manner, and Olshausen. 

* Augustine (Serm. 93, c. 2) warns his hearers that th«j parable is not to be 
limited to such, but belongs to all souls, quae habent Catholicam fidem, et habere 
videntur bona opera in Ecclesia Dei ; and he quotes 2 Cor. xi. 2. In another place 
he says, Yirginitas cordis fides incorrupta ; — and Jerome (Comm. in Matth., inloc.) : 
Virgines appellantur, qui gloriantur in unius Dei notitia, et mens eorum idolatriae 
turba non constupratur : and again (Ad Jovin., 1. 2) : Decern virgines non totius 
generis humani, sed solicitorum et pigrorum exempla sunt, quorum alteri semper 
Domini praestolantur adventum, alteri somno et inertiae se dantes, futurum judici- 
um non putant. There is apparently Chrysostom's limitation of the parable, in the 
use made of it in a prayer for the consecration of nuns, given by Mabillon (Liturg. 
Gall., 1. 3, p. 311), where, among other allusions to the parable, this occurs : Rega- 
lem januam cum sapientibus Virginibus licenter introeant. Yet this may be no 
more than an adaptation. Tertullian (De Anima, c. 18) mentions a singular use or 
rather abuse which some of the Gnostics made of this parable : The five foolish 
virgins are the five senses, foolish inasmuch as they are easily deceived, and often 
give fallacious notices ; while the five wise are the reasonable powers, which have 
the capability of apprehending ideas. 



204 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

spiritual fornication, of apostasy from the one God. For such we arc 
to understand by the virgins who go forth to meet the bridegroom, — all 

v who profess to be waiting for the Son of G-od from heaven, to love his 
appearing, all who with their lips join in the glorious confession, " I be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ our Lord, who shall come again to judge both the 
quick and the dead," and who do not by their deeds openly deny that 
hope ; all are included, who would desire to include themselves in the 
number of his believing people. This they have all in common, that they 

^ confess to the same Lord, they profess to have the same hope in him, — 
even as the virgins were alike in this, that they all " took their lamps, and 
went forth to meet the 'bridegroom?'' But, it is immediately added, "Jive 
of tliem were wise, and five of them were foolish ; the numbers make 
nothing to the case — only the division is essential. They are not dis- 
tinguished into good and bad, but as the hearers at Matt. vii. 25-27, 
into "wise" and "foolish" for as a certain degree of good-will toward 

^the truth is assumed there in the foolish from their putting themselves in 
the relation of hearers, and even attempting to build, so here from their 
going forth to meet the bridegroom. We have them described — the wise, 
2 Pet. 1. 5-8, and the foolish, 2 Pet. i. 9. 

The Lord proceeds to tell wherein the folly of these and the wisdom 
of those consisted : — " They that loere foolish took their lamps, but took no 
oil with them; but tlve ivise took oil in their vessels ivith t/ieir lamps." It 
is evident that here is the point on which the interpretation of the para- 
ble turns : the success of an interpreter must depend on his rightly ex- 
plaining what the having, or not having, a reserved supply of oil may 
mean. Here again we meet with a controversy between the Romanists 
and the Reformers, not different from that which they held concerning 
the signification of the wedding garment. The latter asserted that what 

"J these virgins lacked was the living principle of faith ; what they had 
were the outer deeds of Christianity, these were their lamps shining 
before men : — what they wanted was the inner spirit of life, the living 
faith ; this was the oil which they should have had, if their lamps were 
to burn bright before Christ in the day of his appearing.* The Romanist 



* This is very much Augustine's interpretation (Ep. 140, c. 33 ; Serm. 149, c. 
11) : Lampades bona sunt opera . . . et ipsa quae etiam coram hominibns lucet 
laudabilis conversatio ; sed magni interest qua mentis intentione fiat . . . Quid est 
ergo ferre oleum secum, nisi habere conscientiam placendi Deo de bonis operibus, 
et non ibi finem gaudii sui ponere, si homines laudent. Cocceius explains the oil in 
the vessels thus, Doctrina Spiritus Sancti fidem pascens in perpetuum ut non defi- 
ciat : and Cajetan, a Romanist expositor, consents to this interpretation ; his words 
are so excellent that I will quote them : In hoc differunt operantes bona opera, 
quod aliqui habent testimonium suae bonitatis foris tantum in ipsis operibus bonis : 
intus enim non sentiunt se diligere Deum in toto corde, se pcenitere peccatorum 



THE TEN VIRGINS. , 205 

reverses the whole, and affirms that what they had was faith, but then it 
was a faith which, not having works, was "dead, being alone" (Jam. 
ii. 17) ; they were not careful to maintain good works, to nourish the 
lamp of faith, which they bore in sight of men, with deeds of light done 
for and in the sight of Grod ; they did not by well-doing stir up the 
grace of God that was in them, and so through this sluggishness and 
sloth the grace which they did not use was taken from them; their 
lamps burned dim, and at last were wholly extinguished, and they had 
not wherewith to revive them anew.* It is needless to observe in what 
different senses the two parties use the word faith, — the Romanist as the 
outward profession of the truth — the reformers as the root and living 
principle of Christian life.f If it were not for those opposite uses of the 
same term, the two interpretations would not be opposed to, or exclude, 
one another, — certainly would not be incapable of a fair reconciliation.^ 
For we may equally contemplate the foolish virgins who were unprovided 
with oil, as those going through a round of external duties, without life, 
/ without love, without any striving after inward conformity to the law of 
L G-od, to whom religion is all husk and no kernel ; or again, we may con- 
template them as those who, confessing Christ with their lips, and hold- 
ing fast the form of the truth, yet are not diligent in the work of the 
Lord, in acts of charity, of humility, and self-denial ; and who therefore 
by that law which decrees that from him who hath not shall be taken 
f even that which he hath, do gradually lose that grace which they had, 
I and find that they have lost it altogether, at the decisive moment when 
it were need that they should have it in largest measure. It is clear 
that whatever is merely outward in the Christian profession is the lamn 
— whatever is inward and spiritual is the oiMaid up in the vessels. 
When we contemplate with St. James the faith as the bod} 7 , and the 
works as that which witnesses for an informing vivifying soul, then the 



quia sunt offensas Dei, se diligere prox;nium propter Deum. Alii autem operantur 
sic bona, ut et ipsa opera lucentia testimonium foris reddant boni animi, et intus in 
conscientia. propria ipse Spiritus Sanctus testificetur spiritui eorum qu'od filii Dei 
sunt. Sentiunt enim in corde toto se diligere Deum, pcenitere propter Deum, dili- 
gere proximum et seipsum propter Deum, et breviter Deum esse sibi rationem 
aniandl sperandi, timendi, gaudendi, tristandi et breviter operandi intus et extra • 
hoc est enim oleum in vasis propriis. 

* This view too has its supporters among the Fathers : thus Jerome (in loc.) : 
Non habent oleum, quae videntur simili quidem fide Dominum confiteri, sed virtu- 
tum opera negligunt. Cf. Origen, in Matth., Ti-act. 32. 

f As Augustine, when he says : Animae tuae anima fides. 

X For instance, who would refuse to accede to the explanation given by Ger- 
hard 1 Per lampades accensas externa oris professio et exterior pietatis species : 
per oleum vero in vasis interior cordis justitia, vera fides, sincera charitas, vigilan- 
tia, prudentia, quae solius Dei, non autem hominum oculis obvia, intelliguntur. 



J 



206 , THE TEN VIRGINS. 

faith is the lamp, the works the oil in the vessels ; — but when on the 
other hand we contemplate with St. Paul the works as only having a 
value from the living principle of faith out of which they spring, then 
the works are the lamp, and the faith the oil which must feed it. Yet 
in either case, before we have fully exhausted the meaning of the oil, 
we must get beyond both the works and the faith to something higher 
than either, ( the informing Spirit of God which prompts the works and 
quickens the faith, /and of which Spirit oil is ever in Scripture the 
standing symbol. (Exod. xxx. 22-33; Zech. iv. 2, 12; Acts. x. 38; 
Heb. i. 9.) 

But under whatever aspect we regard the relation between the oil 
in the lamps and in the vessels, the purpose of the parable is, as we 
learn from the Lord's concluding words, to impress upon the members 
of his Church their need of vigilance. Regarded in the one view, it is a 
warning that they be careful to maintain good works, — that they be not 
weary of well-doing, — that they be not of the number of those who are 
satisfied with saying, Lord, Lord, while they do not the things that he 
says. Regarded under the other aspect, it is a warning that they be 
watchful over their inward state, — over their affections. — over all which, 
withdrawn from the eyes of man, is seen only of God ; — that they seek 
to be glorious ivithin, to have a continual supply of the Spirit of Christ 
Jesus in their inmost hearts, to approve themselves before God,* as 
well as to show a fair and unblamable conversation before the world. 
In either case, we must remember, and it adds much to the solemnity of 
the lesson, that by the foolish virgins are meant, — not hypocrites, not 

* This is a point which is brought out with great frequency and urgency, by the 
old expositors, by Augustine, Ep. 140, c. 31, and again, Serm. 93, c. 8 ; by Gregory 
the Great, Horn. 12 in Evang. : and with much beauty by the author of a sermon 
found among the works of St. Bernard (v. 2, p. 722) : Oleum in lampade est opiis bon- 
um in manifestatione, sed dum videtur a proximis caritas operis, dum mirantur et 
laudant, extollitur plerumque et adsurgit elatus animus operantis, et dum in se et 
non in Domino gloriatur, lumen lampadis adnullatur, et carens fomento congruo 
lampas, quae coram hominibus clare lucet, coram Domino tonebratur. Prudentes 
vero virgines praeter oleum quod in lampadibus habent, oleum aliud in vasis repo- 
nunt : quia nimirum sanctae animae dum sponsi sui prsestolantur adventum, dum 
toto desiderio ei clamant quotidie. Adveniat regnum tuum, praeter ilia opera quae 
proximis lucent ad Dei gloriam et videntur, aliqua in occulto, ubi solus Pater videt. 
opera faciunt . . . Haec est gloria filial regis ab intus. dum plus de oleo quod in 
vasis conscientiae dilucescit, quarn de eo quod lucet de foris gloriatur : periissc 
aestimat omne quod cernitur, -nee id dignum judicat rcmuneratione, quod favores 
hominum prosequuntur. Latenter igitur quae praevalet, operatur, petit secretum, 
orationibus pulsat coelum, fundit lacrymas testes amoris, . . . haec est gloria, sed ab 
intus, sed invisa, filiae regis et amicae. Hoc oleum fatuao virgines non habent, quia 
nisi ad nitorem vanae gloriae et favorcm hominum bona non operantur. Hoc oleum 
in quo prudente.s confidunt, in abditis conscientiarum vasculis reponunt. 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 207 

self-conscious dissemblers, much less the openly pre fane and ungodly, 
/ but the negligent in prayer, the slothful in work, and all those, whose 
/ scheme for a Christian life is laid out to satisfy the eyes of men, and not 
• to please God who seeth in secret. Nor is it that they have actually no 
' oil at all ; they have some, but not enough ; their lamps, when they 
first go forth, are evidently burning, else they could not speak of them 
as on the point of expiring just as the bridegroom was approaching. In 
fact, the having no oil provided in the vessels is exactly parallel to the 
having no deepness of earth (Matt. xiii. 5) ; the seed springs up till 
the sun scorches it, — the lamps burn on till their oil is exhausted through 
the length of the bridegroom's delay. In each case there is something 
more than a merely external profession, conscious to itself that it is no- 
thing besides ; — it is not that there was no faith, but rather that there 
was only that fides temporaria which could not endure temptation nor \ 
survive delay, — the Christian life in manifestation, but not fed from ' 
deep internal fountains. But tJiey are like the wise virgins, who recog- 
nize the possibility that the bridegroom may tarry long, that the Church 
may not very soon, perhaps not in their days, enter into its glory ; — 
who, therefore, foresee that they may have a long life to live of toil and 
self-denial, before they shall be called to cease from their labors, be- 
fore the kingdom shall come unto them ; — and who consequently feel 
that it is not a few warm excited feelings which will carry them suc- 
cessfully through alTtnls, — which will enable them to endure unto the 
end ; for such are but as a fire among straw, which will quickly blaze 
up and as quickly be extinguished. They feel that principles as well 
as feelings must be engaged in the work, — that their first good impulses 
and desires will carry them but a very little way, unless they be re- 
vived, strengthened, and purified, by a continual supply of the Spirit of 
God. If the bridegroom were to come at once, perhaps it might be an- 
other thing, but their wisdom is that, since it may possibly be otherwise, 
they see their need of making provision against the contingency. 

When it is said in the parable that the bridegroom did actually tar- 
ry, we may number this among the many hints, which were given by 
our Lord, that it was possible the time of his return might be delayed 
beyond the expectation of his first disciples. It was a hint and no more ; 
if more had been given, if the Lord had said plainly that he would not 
come for many centuries, then the first ages of the Church would have 
been placed in a disadvantageous position, being deprived of that power- 
i ful motive to holiness and diligence supplied to each generation of the 
faithful, by the possibility of the Lord's return in their time. It is not 
1 that he desires each succeeding generation to believe that he will cer- 
tainly return in their time, for he does not desire our faith and our prac- 
tice to be founded on an error, as, in that case, the faith and practice of 



/ 



208 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

all generations except the last would be. But it is a necessary element 
. of the doctrine concerning the second coming of Christ, that it should 

<be possible at any time, that no generation should- consider it improba- 
ble in theirs.* The love, the earnest longing of those first Christians 
made them to assume that coming to be close at hand. In the strength 
and joy of this faith they lived and suffered, and when they died, the 
kingdom was indeed come unto them.f But in addition to the reason 
here noted, why the Church should not have been acquainted with 
the precise time of her Lord's return, it may be added, that it was in 
itself, no doubt, undetermined. Prophecy is no fatalism.^ and it was 
always open to every age by faith and prayer to bring about, or at least 
to hasten that coming, so that the apostle speaks of the faithful not 
merely as looking for, but also hasting, the A boming of the day of God 

(2 Pet. iii. 12) ; and eompare acts iii. 19/^-" Repent ye that the 

times of refreshing may come ;" these " times of refreshing" being evi- 
dently identical with "the times of restitution of all things" (ver. 21), 
the glorious setting up of the kingdom of Christ ; and we find the same 
truth, that the quicker or tardier approach of that time is conditional, 
elsewhere declared in clearest terms. (2 Pet. iii. 9.) In agreement 
with these passages, we pray- that it may please God " to accomplish 
the number of his elect, and to hasten his kingdom." But while the 
matter. was left by the wisdom of God in this uncertainty, it was yet im- 
portant that after the expectations of the first ages of the Church had 
proved to be ungrounded, those who examined the Scriptures should 
find intimations there that this might probably be the case.§ Of these 
intimations there are many, and this present passage is one. 

But to return ; the bridegroom tarrying, the virgins " all slumbered 
and slept" The steps by which they fell into deep sleep are here 
marked, first they nodded the head or slumbered, and next they slept 
profoundly. Some have understood by this sleeping of all, a certain un- 

* Augustine : Latet ultimus dies, ut observetur omnis dies ; and Tertullian (De 
Anima, c. 33) gives the reason why the Father has reserved to himself the know- 
ledge of that day : Ut pendula expectatione solicitudo fidei probetur, semper diem 
observans, dum semper ignorat, quotidie timens, quod quotidie sperat. 

f Yet Augustine, claiming a right to dissent from a scheme of prophetic inter- 
pretation current in his day, which made the end of the world to be already instant, 
says very beautifully (Ep. 199, c. 5) : Non ergo ille diligit Adventum Domini, qui 
ilium asserit propinquare, aut ille qui esserit non propinquare ; sed ille potius qui 
eum sive prope sive longe sit, sinceritate fidei, firmitate spei, ardore caritatia ex- 
pectat. 

£ In Augustine's words, Praedixi, non fixi. 

§ Augustine (Ep. 199, c. 5) : Ne forte cam transisset tempus, quo eum credi 
derant esse vcnturum, et venisse non cernerent, etiam caetera fallaciter sibi promit- 
ti arbitrantos, et de ipsa mercede fidei desperarent. 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 209 

readiness that will be found in the whole Church, — a certain acquiescence 
in the present time and in the present things, even among the faithful 
themselves, though with this difference, that their unreadiness will be 
remediable, and easily removed ; its removal being actually signified b) 
the trimming and replenishing of their lamps, while that of the others 
will be beyond remedy.* Augustinef proposes, but it is only to reject 
this interpretation, that by the sleeping of all is signified the love of all 

/ in some measure growing cold ; for he asks, Why were these wise 
admitted unless for the very reason that their .ove had not grown cold? 

j But there is, he saysj a sleep common to all, the sleep of death, which 

H by these words is indicated : and this is the explanation of Chrysostom, 

Theophylact, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and nearly all the ancient 

interpreters. It seems, indeed, far preferable to that other which un- 

J derstands by this slumbering and sleeping the negligences and omissions 
of even the best Christians, for it is scarcely probable that our Lord 
would have, as it were, given this allowance for a certain degree of negli- 
gence, seeing that with all the most earnest provocations to diligence, we 
are ever inclined to indulge in spiritual sloth. It is most improbable of 
all that he should have done so in a parable of which the very aim and 
moral is that we be always ready, — that we be not taken unprepared. 
But perh'aps by this slumbering and sleeping more may not be meant 
than that all, having taken such measures as they counted needful to< 
enable them to meet the bridegroom as they would wish, calmly and 
securely awaited his approach.^ Moreover, the conveniences of the para- 
bolic narration which required to be consulted seem to require such a 
circumstance as this. For had the foolish virgins been in a condition to 
mark the lapse of time, and the gradual waning of their lamps, they,. 
— knowing that they had not wherewith to replenish them, — would 
naturally have bestirred themselves before the decisive moment arrived,, 
to procure a new supply. The fact that they fell asleep and were not 
awakened except by the cry of the advancing bridal company gives, — 
and scarcely any thing else would give, — an easy and natural explana- 
tion of their utter and irremediable destitution of oil at the moment 
when there was most need that they should have it in abundance. And 

* So Cocceius : Significat securitatem, quas Ecclesiam Christianam post primaw 
quasi vigiliam noctis persecutionum cum pace invasit ; and Grotius, in this view 
following the Auct. Oper. Imperf., quotes in confirmation Jam. iii. 2 ; Rom. xiii. 2. 
Maldonatus gives this explanation in a form somewhat modified, and popular at the 
present day : Dormire interpretor desinere de adventu Domini cogitare. 

t Serm. 93, c. 5 ; Ep. 140, c. 32. 

% Hilary (Comm. inMatth. , c. 27), unites this meaning and the preceding : Ex 
spectanlium somnus credentium quies est. et in poenitentiae tempore mors tempt* 
ralis universorum. 

14 



»( 



210 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

had the wise virgins, not slept as well, — had they been represented ai 
watching while the others were sleeping, it would have seemed like a 
lack of love upon their parts, not to have warned their companions of the 
lapse of time and the increasing dimness with which their lamps were 
burning, while yet help was possible.* 

It was at midnight, and not till then, that " there ivas a cry made, 
BeJwld the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him ;"- — this cry we 
may suppose to have "been made either by a part of the retinue running 
before, or by the applauding multitude, who, even till that late hour, had 
been waiting to see the passage of the procession through the streets, 
and thus testified their lively sympathy in what was going forward. But 
the spiritual signification of the cry at midnight has been variously given. 

\ Most are agreed to find an allusion to " the voice of the archangel and 
the trump of Grod" (1 Thess. iv. 16), which shall be heard when the 
Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. Some, fcowever, explain 
the cry as coming from watchers in the Church, such as shall not be 
altogether lacking in the last times, — by whom the signs of the times 
have been observed, and who would proclaim aloud the near advent of 
the Lord, the heavenly Bridegroom, when he draws nigh, accompanied 
by the angels the friends of the bridegroom, and leading home his bride, 
the triumphant Church, and looking to be met and greeted by the 
members of his Church yet militant on earth, themselves a part of that 
mystical bride,f that so he may bring her to the glorious mansion — the 
house of everlasting joy and gladness which he has prepared for her. 
And this cry is " at midnight :" it was an opinion current among the 

— later Jews, that the Messiah would come suddenly at midnight, as their 
forefathers had gone out from Egypt and obtained 'their former deliver- 
ance, at that very hour (Exod. xii. 29), from which belief Jerome}: supposes 
the apostolic tradition of not dismissing the people on Easter eve, till 

\ ;the middle night was past, to have been derived. They waited till then, 
that they might be assembled if Christ should come, who was twice to 
glorify that night, first, by in it resuming his life, and again, by assum- 
ing in it the dominion of the world : and not a few have found in the 
passage before us an argument for supposing that the Lord's coming 
would actually take place at the middle night. But it is more natural 
to suppose that midnight is here named, simply because that is the time 
when commonly deep, sleep falls upon men, — when such an occurrence as 

* Storr, De Par. Chrisli, in his Opusc. Acad., v. 1, p. 133. 

f Augustine {Quast. lxxxiii. qu. 59) : Ex ipsis virginibus constat ea quae dici- 
tur sponsa, tanquam si omnibus Christianis in Ecclesiam concurrentibus filii ad 
matrem concurrere dicantur, cum ex ipsis filiis congregatis constet ea quae dicitur 
mater. (See Rev. xix. 7, 9). 

% Comm. in Matth., in loc. 



/ 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 211 

that in the parable would be least looked for, accounted least likely to 
happen ; .and because thus the unexpectedness of Christ's coming, of the 
day of the Lord which "cometh as a thief in the night" (1 Thess. v. 2), 
is in a lively manner set out.* 

But when the cry was heard. ll the?i all those virgins arose, and 
trimmed their lamps." \ Every one at the last prepares to give an 
account of his works, inquires into the solidity of the grounds of his 
faith.t seriously searches whether his life has been one which will have 
praise not merely of men, for that he now feels will avail nothing, but 
also of God. Many put off this examination of the very grounds of 
their faith and hope to the last moment — nay, some manage to defer it, 
and the miserable discoveries which will then be made, beyond the 
grave, even till the day of judgment, — but further it cannot be deferred. 
"When the day of Christ comes, it will be impossible for any to remain 
ignorant any longer of his true state, for that day will be a revelation 
of the hidden things of men, of things which had remained hidden even 
from themselves ; — a flood of light will then pour into all the darkest 
corners of all hearts, and show every man to himself exactly as he is, — 
so that self-deception will be no longer possible. Thus when the foolish 
virgins arose to trim their lamps, they discovered to their dismay that 
their lamps were on the point of expiring for lack of nourishment, — and 
that they had not wherewith to replenish them: — so that they were 
compelled in their need to turn to their wiser companions, saying, 
" Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone otit? 1 ^ Of course the 

* Augustine (Serm. 93, c. 6) : Quid est media, nocte 7 Quando non speratur, 
quando omnino non creditur ; — and Jerome : Subito enim, quasi intempesta nocte. 
et securis omnibus Christi resonabit adventus. 

f TTard ( Vino of the Hindoos, v. 2, p. 29), describing the parts of a marriage 
ceremony in India of which he was an eye-witness, says : "After waiting two or 
three hours, at length near midnight it was announced as in the very words of Scrip- 
ture, ' Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him.' All the persons 
employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to fill up their 
stations in the procession — some of them had lost their lights and were unprepared, but 
it icas then too late to seek them; and the cavalcade moved forward." 

X Augustine : Rationem prasparant reddere de operibus suis. Cocceius : Qui- 
vis homo apud se fidei suae soliditatem requisivit. 

<j The hand-lamp was naturally small, and would not contain a supply of oil for 
very many hours of continuous burning : even the lamps used at a festival, which 
would be larger, needed to be replenished, if kept burning long into the night. 
Thus Petronius, 22 : Tricliniarchus experrectus lucernis occidentibus oleum infu- 
derat ; see also c. 70. Such lucerne occidentes are the lamps here, failing and 
" going out" as it is in the margin of our Bibles, not already " gone out" for in that 
case they would not merely have needed to trim and feed them, but must have asked 
from their companions also permission to kindle them anew, of which yet we hear 
nothing. The trimming itself implied two things, the infusion cf fresh oil. and the 



212 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

request and the refusal which it calls out, — like the discourse between 
Abraham and Dives, — are only the clothing and outer garb of the truth 
— but of truth how important ! — no other indeed than this, that we shall 
. look in vain from men for that grace which God only can supply, that 
I we shall be miserably disappointed, if we think thus to borrow in an 
easy lazy way, that which must be bought, — won, that is, by earnest 
prayer and diligent endeavor. 

"But t/ie wise answered, saying, Not so ;* lest there be r not enough j w 
us and youP Every man must live by his own faith. There is that 
which one can communicate to another, and make himself the richer — 
as one who gives another light, has not therefore less light, but walks 
henceforth in the light of two torches instead of one ; but there is also 
that which being divine is in its very nature incommunicable from man to 
man, which can be obtained only from above, and which every man must 
obtain for himself; — one can indeed point out to another where he is to 
dig for the precious ore, but after all is said, each one must bring it up 
for himself and by his own efforts. The wise virgins did all they could 
for their unfortunate companions, gave them the best counsel that under 
the circumstances was possible, when they said, "Go ye rather to tlwm 
that sell, and buy for yourselves; 11 turn to the dispensers of heavenly 
grace, to them whom God has appointed in the Church as channels of 
his gifts, or as some would explain it, to the prophets and apostles, and 
/earn from their words and teaching, how to revive the work of God in 
your souls, if yet there be time. Sometimes the words have been under- 
stood as ironically spoken ;f but how much more pleasing, how much 
more consistent with their character whom the wise virgins represent, to 
see in them a counsel of love, of that love which emphatically " hopeth 
all things," — an exhortation to their companions that they trust not in 
man, but betake themselves, if it yet be time, to the sources from which 
true effectual grace can alone be obtained, that they seek yet to revive 

removing whatever had gathered round, and was clogging the wick. For the last 
purpose there was often a little instrument that hung by a slender chain from the 
lamp itself— pointed for the removing of the snuffs (the putres fungi) from around 
the flame, and furnished with a little hook at the side by which the wick, when 
' need was, might be drawn further out. This instrument is sometimes found still 
attached to the bronze lamps discovered in sepulchres. In Virgil's Moretum, 11 : 
Et producit acu stupas humore carentes. (See Becker's Gallus, v. 2, p. 205, seq.) 

* The answer in the Greek is strongly elliptical as in a moment of earnestness 
and haste. Bengel : Abrupta oratio, festinationi illi conveniens. On the spirit of 
the answer of the wise virgins as regards themselves, Augustine remarks : Non 
desperatione dictum est, sed sobria et piahumilitate; andChrysostom(Z?£P<r>u;!., 
Horn. 3) : Ov oY acnrXayx^iav tovto iroiovcrai, a\\a Sia to crrevbu rod naipov. 

t Augustine (Scrm. 93, c. 8) : Non consulentium sed irridentium est ista re- 
aponsio ; and Lather quotes, Justi ridebu'nt in interitu impiorum. 



THE TEN YIEGINS. 213 

the work of grace in their hearts. — Nor can we refuse to see in the 
reason which they give for refusing to comply with the others' request, 
namely, " lesttlwre be not enough for us and you" an argument against 
works of supererogation, however the Romish expositors may resist the 
drawing of any such conclusion from the words. '• The righteous shall 
hardly be saved ;* — the wise virgins did not feel that they had any thing 
over, — aught which, as not needing for themselves, they could impart to 
others. All which they hoped to attain was, that their own lamps might 
burn bright enough to allow them to make part of the bridal company, 
to enter with those that entered into the joy of the festal chamber.! 

So much was granted them : — while the others were absent, seeking 
to repair their past neglect, " the bridegroom came, and they that were 
ready "\ they whose lamps were burning, having been fed anew from 



* Augustine (Ep. 140, c. 34) : Petunt a sapientibus oleum, nee inveniunt, nee 
accipiunt, illis respondentibus se nescire, utrum vel sibi sufficiat ipsa conscientia, 
qua exspectant misericordiam sub illo Judice, qui cam in tbrono sederit, quis glo- 
riabitur castum se habere cor, aut quis gloriabitur mundum se esse a peccato, nisi 
superexultet misericordia judicio 1 

f Tertullian (De Pudic, c. 22) makes good application of this part of the para- 
ble, when he is opposing the libelli pacis which the confessors in the African 
Church gave to the lapsed : Sufficiat martyri propria delicta purgasse. Ingrati 
aut superbi est in alios quoque spargere, quod pro magno fuerit consecutus. Quis 
alienam mortem sua solvit nisi solus Dei filius 1 . . . Proinde qui ilium asmularis 
donando delicta, si nihil ipse deliquisti, plane patere pro me. Si vero peccator es, 
quomodo oleum facuhe tuas sufficere et tibi et mihi poterit 1 — Gurtler (Syst. Theol. 
Proph., p. 711) gives a strange story from Melchior Adamus, which witnesses how 
strongly it was once felt that there was here an argument against all hoping in man 
and in the merits of men rather than in God. The words are these : " There was 
a. d. 1322, exhibited at Eisenach before the Margrave Frederick of Misnia. the 
mystery concerning the five wise and as many foolish virgins. The wise were St. 
Mary, St. Catharine, St. Barbara, St. Dorothy, and St. Margaret. To these come 
the foolish, seeking that they will impart to them of their oil, that is, as the actor 
explained it, intercede with God for them that they also may be admitted to the mar- 
riage, that is, to the kingdom of heaven. What happens 1 the wise absolutely 
deny that they can communicate aught. Then a sad spectacle began — the 
foolish knocked, they wept, they were instant in prayer— but all profited not a jot, 
they were bidden to depart and buy oil. 'Which when that prince saw and heard, 
he is said to have been so amazed, that he fell into a grievous and dangerous sick- 
ness. ' What,' he exclaimed, ' is our Christian faith, if neither Mary nor any other 
saint can be persuaded to intercede for us V From this sadness an apoplexy had its 
rise, of which he died the fourth day after, and was buried at Eisenach." This 
event is told with some differences in Carlyle's Miscellanies, v. 2. p. 415. It may 
be observed here that this parable was a very favorite subject for the mysteries in 
the middle ages. (See Du Meril's Poesies populaires Latines, p. 138.) 

| In the Pirke Avoth there is this comparison : Seculum hoc simile est vestibulo, 
et seculum futurnm triclinio. Praepara teipsum in vestibulo, ut ingredi possis in 
triclinium. 



214 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

their vessels, " went in with him to the marriage* and ike door was 
shut ;" shut as much for the security and joy without interruption of 
those within, as for the lasting exclusion of those without. ^See Gen. vii. 
16; Rev. iii. 12.) "What door?" exclaims the author of an ancient 
homily on this parable. f " That which now is open to them coming from 
the east and from the west, that they may sit down with Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, — that Door which saith, 
Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Behold how it is 
now open, which shall then be closed for evermore. Murderers come, 
and they are admitted, — publicans and harlots come, and they are 
received, — unclean and adulterers and robbers, and whosoever is of this 
kind, come, and the open door doth not deny itself to them, for Christ, 
the Door, is infinite to pardon, reaching beyond every degree and every 
amount of wickedness. But then what saith he? The door is shut. 
No one's penitence, — no one's prayer, — no one's groaning shall any 
more be admitted. That door is shut, which received Aaron after his 
idolatry, — which admitted David after his adultery — after his homicide, 
which not only did not repel Peter after his threefold denial, but 
delivered its keys to be guarded by him." (See Luke xvi. 26.) 

The door once shut, " afterwards came the other virgins, saying, 
Lord, Lord, open to us" not that they have now found the oil, but hav- 
ing sought it in vain, they come looking for mercy, when now it is the 
time of judgment.^ In the title " Lord" by which they address the 
bridegroom, they claim to stand in a near and intimate relation to him ; 
as in the " Lord, Lord" twice repeated, is an evidence of the earnest- 
ness with which they now claim admission ; some say, also of their vain 
confidence ; but perhaps rather of the misgiving which already pos- 
sesses them, lest they should be excluded from the nuptial feast, lest it 
be now to late, lest the needful conditions be found unfulfilled on their 
part ; — even as it proves ; for in them that solemn line of the old Church 
hymn must find itself true, Plena luctu caret fructu sera poenitentia. 
And in reply to their claim to be admitted, they hear from within the 
sentence of their exclusion, — " He answered and said, Verily I say unto 

* Compare Milton's Sonnet to a Virtuous Young Lady, where there is allusion 
in almost every word to this latter portion of our parable. 

Thy care is fixed and zealously attends 

To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds oflight, 

And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure, 

Thou, when the Bridegroem with his feastful friends 

Passes to bliss in the mid hour of night, 

Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure. 

t The same from whom an extract is given, p. 206, note. 
}■ Augustine, Ep. 140, c. 35. 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 215 

you, I know you not" It is not that he disclaims an outward know- 
ledge, but he does not know them in that sense in which the Lord says, 
■ I know my sheep, and am known of mine." This knowledge is of ne- 
cessity reciprocal, so that Agustine's, though it may seem at first a 
slight, is indeed a very profound remark, when explaining, " I know you 
not" he observes,- it is nothing else than, " Ye know not me." Of course 
the issue is, that the foolish virgins remain excluded, and for ever, from 
the marriage feast.* (See Isai. lxv. 13.) On this their exclusion Ben- 
/gel observes, that there are four classes of persons ; those that have an 
/ abundant entrance into the kingdom, entering as it were with sails set 
V. into the haven ; those again that are saved, as shipwrecked mariners 
reaching with difficulty the shore. On the other side, there are those 
who go evidently the broad way to destruction, whose sins go before 
them ; while again, there are those who, though they seemed not far off 
from the kingdom of God, yet miss it after all ; such were these five 
foolish virgins, and the fate of these, who were so near, and yet after all 
fell short, he observes with truth, must always appear the most miserable 
of all. Lest that may be our fate, the Lord says to us, — for what he 
said to his hearers then, he says unto all, to his Church and to every 
member of it in every age, — " l Watch therefore, for ye know neither t/ie 
day nor the hour ;'f and this being so, the only certain way to be ready 
upon that day, is that you be ready upon every day : and the parable 
has taught you that unreadiness upon that day is without a remedy ; 
the doom of the foolish virgins has shown you ihat the work, which 
should have been the work of a life, cannot be huddled up into a mo 
ment. ' Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour? " 

This parable will obtain a wider application if we keep in memory 
that, while it is quite true that there is one great coming of the Lord at 
the last, yet not the less does he come in all the great crises of his 
* Church, at each new manifestation of his Spirit ; and at each of these 
too there is a separation among those who are called by his name, into 
wise and foolish, as they are spiritually alive or dead. Thus at Pente- 
cost, when by his Spirit he returned to his Church, he came : the pru- 



* We have at Luke xiii. 25, the same image of the excluded vainly seeking an 
entrance, though it appears with important modifications. It is there the master, 
who has appointed a set time in the evening by which all his servants shall have 
returned home. "When the hour arrives, he rises up and oars his doors, and those 
of the household who have lingered and arrive later cannot persuade him again to 
open them. They remain without, and he declares the fellowship between them 
and him has never been more than an outward one, and now is broken altogether. 

t "What is more in this verse should have no place in the text, and has proba- 
bly been brought into it from the parallel passages, such as Matt. xxiv. 44. It is 
excluded by Lachmann. 



216 THE TEN VIRGINS. 

dent in Israel went in with him to the feast, the foolish tarried without 
Thus too he came at the Reformation: those that had oil went in: those 
that had empty lamps, the form of godliness without the power, tarried 
without. Each of these was an example of that which should be more 
signally fulfilled at the end. ■ 

It remains to say a few words on the relation in which this parable 
stands to that of the Marriage of the King's Son, and how it happens 
that in that the unworthy guest actually finds admission to the marriage 
supper, and is only from thence cast out, while in this the foolish virgins 
are not so much as admitted to the feast. It might indeed be answered, 
that this is accidental, — that the differences grow out of the different con- 
struction of the two parables ; but by such answers every thing that is 
distinctive in the parables may be explained away : and we treat them 
with greater respect, when we look for some deeper lying reason. The 
explanation seems to be, that the marriage festivities which are there 
spoken of, are different from these. In Gerhard's words, " Those are 
celebrated in this life in the Church militant, these at the last day in the 
Church triumphant-. To those, even they are admitted who are not 
adorned with the wedding garment, but to these only they to whom it is 
granted that they should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for 
the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Rev. xix. 8) ; to those, men 
are called by the trumpet of the Gospel ; — to these, by the trumpet of 
the Archangel. To those, who enter, can again go out from them, or 
be cast out; — who isjonce introduced to these, never goes out, nor is 
cast out from them any more : wherefore it is said, ' The door was 
shut.'" — We may finish the consideration of this exquisite parable with 
the words in which Augustine concludes a homily* upon it : " Now \ 
we labor, and our lamps fluctuate among the gusts and temptations of 



* Serm. 93, c. 10. — Besides the passage referred to p. 214. note, there is an- 
other in Luke (xii. 35-38) offering many analogies to this parable, though with 
differences as well. The faithful appear there not as yirgins but as servants, that is, 
their active labor for their Lord is more brought out, and they are waiting for him 
not as here when he shall come to, but when he shall return from, the wedding 
(jt6t€ avaXvaei e/c tuv ydfxcov), from the heavenly bridal, the union with the Church 
In heaven. The warning to a preparedness to meet him clothes itself under images 
not exactly similar. They must have their loins girt up (Jer. i. 17 ; 1 Pet. i. 13), 
and their lights burning — that is, they must be prompt and succinct to wait upon 
him, and his home must be bright and beaming with lights. The festival must 
be prepared which should celebrate his return, and his admission must be without 
delay, and then that which they have prepared for him shall indeed prove to have 
been prepared for themselves ; " He shall gird himself and make them to sit down 
to meat, and come forth, and serve them." "What he did at the Paschal Supper 
(John xiii. 4), shall prove but a prophecy of what he shall repeat in a more glorioua 
manner at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. 



THE TEN VIRGINS. 217 

/ fche present wond ; but only let us give heed that our flame burn in 
I such strength, that the winds of temptation may rather fan the flame 
Mban extinguish it."* 

* In early times and in the middle ages this parable was a very favorite subject 
of Christian Art, Miinter (Sinnbilden. d. Alt. Christ., v. 2, p. 91) mentions a pic- 
ture of the five wise virgins in the Cemetery of the Church of St. Agnes, at Rome, 
probably of very early date ; and Caumont (Archit. Relig. au Moyen Age, p. 345), 
describing the representations of the Last Judgment so often found over the great 
western door of a Cathedral, says : On recontre parfois dans les voussures des por- 
tes dix statuettes de femmes, les unes tenant soigneusement a deux mains une 
lampe en forme de coupe ; les autres tenant negligemment d'une seule main la 
mSnie lampe renverse'e. Le Sculpteur a toujours eu soin de placer les Vierges 
sages a la droit du Christ, (-A du c6t6 des bienheureux : les Yierges folles a sa 
gauche, du c6te des r^prouve's. For many further details of interest, see Didbon's 
Manuel d' Incoiwgraphie Chretien.ne, p. 217. 



XIV. 

THE TALENTS. 

Matthew xxv. 14-30. 

While the virgins were represented as waiting for the Lord, we have 
here the servants working for him : — there the inward spiritual rest of 
the Christian was described, — here his external activity. There, by the 
end of the foolish virgins, we were warned against declensions and de- 
cays in the inward spiritual life, — here against sluggishness and sloth 
in our outward vocation and work. That parable enforced the need of 
keeping the heart with all diligence, this the need of giving all diligence 
also to the outward work, if we would be found of Christ in peace at the 
day of his appearing. It is not, therefore, without good reason that 
they appear in their actual order, that of the Yirgins first, and the Talents 
following, since the sole condition of a profitable outward work for the 
kingdom of God, is that the life of Grod be diligently maintained within 
the heart.* Or there is another light in which we may consider the 
distinction between the virgins and the servants, that the first represent 
the more contemplative, — the last, the more active working members of 
the Church, — a distinction universally recognized in early times, though 
of late nearly lost sight of among us. It is true that every member of 
the Church ought to partake of both, of action and contemplation, so that 
even under this view both the parables will still keep their application 
to all ; but one element may predominate in one, the other in another : 
the endeavor of each must be harmoniously to proportion them in his 
own case, according to the gifts which he finds within himself, and the 
needs which he sees in others around him. 

We meet with another recension, so to speak, of this parable at Mark 

* Or they may be co-ordinated with one another. Thus Gerhard {Harm. Eva?ig., 
3. 164) : Lampas fulgens est talentum usui datum, lampas extincta, talentum otio» 
mm et in terrain abeconditum. 



THE TALENTS. 219 

xiii. 34, with not unimportant variations, as there also are traces at the 
same place of the ten virgins (" Lest coming suddenly he find you sleep- 
ing," ver. 36) ; the whole, however, which St. Matthew records more 
distinctly, being by St. Mark blended together, and more briefly recorded. 
There is no doubt, however, that it is the same discourse which both 
Evangelists are relating, as in both it occurs immediately after the warn- 
ing concerning the calamities of the last days. St. Luke (xix. 11) has 
recorded for us a parable very similar to this one, but certainly not 
identical, however some expositors, as Maldonatus, may have affirmed 
the identity of the two.* But every thing is against this. The time 
and place are different ; the parable which Luke records, having been 
spoken when Jesus was now drawing near to Jerusalem, but had not 
yet made his triumphal entry, — this, while he was seated on the Mount 
of Olives, the third day after his entry into the city. That was spoken 
to the multitude as well as to his disciples ; this in the innermost circle 
of his own most trusted followers, of those to whom he was about to con- 
fide the carrying forward of the great work which he had himself com- 
menced on earth. The scope of that, which is the more complex parable, 
is twofold, and may be thus defined. The multitude, and perhaps many 
that were following the Lord with true hearts, thought that he was now 
going to take his kingdom and to reign — to sit on the throne of his father 
David at Jerusalem. He would teach them, on the contrary, that there 
must yet be a long interval ere that should be, — that he must go away, 
and only after a long period return, and that not till that period had elapsed, 
should the powers that opposed his kingdom be effectually put down. In 
the mean time (and here is the point of contact between the two parables), 
those who stood to him in the relation of servants and friends, were not 
to be idly waiting the time of his coming back, but should seek earnestly 
to forward his interests according to the ability which was given them, 
being sure that at his return he would reward each according as his 
work should be ; — at which time of his return, as St. Luke, in accord- 
ance to the plan of his parable, relates, he would also utterly destroy his 
enemies, — break in pieces with the rod of his anger those who refused to 
bow to the sceptre of his love. The scope of his parable then is two- 
fold. It is addressed, in part, to that giddy light-minded multitude, who 
were following Jesus with an expectation that his cause would speedily 
triumph, and who, when they should find their expectations disappointed, 
might, perhaps, many of them turn against him and join in the cry, 
Crucify him. He warns them that his triumph over his enemies, though 
not speedy, yet should be certain, even as it would be terrible : it con- 

* The arguments against the identity of the two parables are well stated by 
Gerhard. {Harm. Evang., c. 154, ad init.) 



220 THE TALENTS. 

tains for them a double warning, that they be not offended or prevented 
from attaching themselves yet closer to him and to his Church by the things 
which should befall him at Jerusalem ; and that, least of all, they should 
suffer themselves to be drawn into the ranks of his foes, since these were 
doomed to an utter destruction. For the disciples also it contains a 
warning, that this long period which should intervene before his coming 
again in glory and in power, was not to be for them a period of sloth 
and inactivity, but a time in which they would be required to show all 
good fidelity to their absent Lord : which fidelity would by him be ac- 
knowledged and abundantly rewarded, even as negligence and sloth 
would meet also their due recompense of reward. 

Here it is at once evident how idle the objections are which have 
lately been brought against the parable as given by the third Evangelist. 
The objector* imagines that he detects there, as in the case of the Mar- 
riage of the King's Son, a blending together, through loose and floating 
tradition, of heterogeneous materials, — that in fact we have there, joined 
in one, what ought to be two parables, and this so awkwardly that the 
jeinings are plainly discernible — the occasion of their confusion being 
that they both turned upon the common fact of a lord absenting himself 
from his home for a while. He observes that servants and citizens 
stand in no relation to one another, that with the very slightest altera- 
tions, ver. 12, 14, 15, 27, would form a complete whole, and standing by 
themselves might be entitled the parable of the Rebellious Citizens : the 
remaining verses would form the parable of the Pounds, which would 
then be free from all admixture of foreign elements.! 

But only let that be kept in mind which this objector seems to have 
forgotten, or never to have perceived, that there were two groups of 
hearers in different states of mind and needing different admonitions, to 
whom the Lord addressed the parable which has been recorded in St. 
Luke, and it will at once be perceived how he divided to all, to his own 
disciples and to the multitude, according to their different needs. Is 
Luke the parable is of necessity more complex, as having a more com- 
plex purpose to fulfil. In Matthew it is simpler ; for it is addressed to 
the disciples, or rather to the apostles alone, and the parts there meant 
for the multitude would be superfluous here, and accordingly find no 
place. 

* Strauss, Leben Jesu, v. 1, p. 675. 

f This view is not new : indeed his whole hook is little more than a mustering 
up and setting in array objections which had been made, and most of them an- 
swered, long ago. Unger on the same ground of the lack of unity in this parable, 
says (De Par. J. Nat., p. 130) : Itaque simplicem apud Matthaeum parabolam, et 
omnium Christi parabolarum simplicitatem atque unitatem recordanti mihi Lucas 
visus est cum ilia simplici parabola, hie alteram similem, sed alias et aliter prola- 
tam, in unam composuisse. 



THE TALENTS. 221 

To the apostles then and to none other the parable of the Talents 
which alone concerns us now, was spoken. It is needful for the right 
understanding of its outward circumstances, that we keep in mind the 
relation of masters and slaves in antiquity : for that between masters and 
servants, as it now exists among us, affords no satisfactory explanation. 
The master of a household going away does not leave with his servants, 
and it is foreign to all the relations between them, moneys wherewith to 
trade in his absence ; nor if he did, could he punish them on his return 
for neglect of duty, as the slothful servant is here punished. But slaves 
in antiquity were often artisans, or were allowed otherwise to engage 
freely in business, paying, as it was frequently arranged, a fixed yearly 
sum to their master : or as here, they had money given them wherewith 
to trade on his account, or with which to enlarge their business, and to 
bring him in a share of their profits.* In the present instance some- 
thing of the sort is assumed, when it is said, " The kingdom of heaven is 
as a man travelling into afar country, who called his oivn\ servants and 
delivered to t/iem his goods." It was " a far country" into which the 
Lord Jesus Christ was about to travel ; % and that his servants might be 
furnished in his absence, he was about to intrust them, and all their 
successors, whose representatives they were, with many excellent gifts. 
The day of Pentecost was no doubt the time when the goods, that is, 
spiritual powers and capacities, were by him most manifestly and most 
abundantly communicated to his servants, that they might profit withal. 
(Ephes. iv. 8-12.) Yet was not that the first occasion when they were 
so given ; the Lord had communicated to them much during his earthly 
sojourn with them (John xv. 3), and before his ascension (John xx. 22), 
and from that day forth he has been evermore delivering his goods to 
each successive generation of his servants. This being so, the parable 
has application to all times ; — yet primarily to all persons : it was 
first addressed to the apostles alone, and the gifts for the exercise of the 
ministry, the powers which Christ has given to his Church, are signified, 
in the first place, by the committed talents. Seeing, however, that all 
are called in their measure to edify one another, that all Christians have 
a spiritual vocation, and are intrusted with gifts, more or fewer, for 
which they will have to render an account, the parable is applicable to 

* See Mr. Greswell's Exp. of the Par., v 5 part 2, p. 27 ; seq.. and the Diet. 
of Gr. and Rom. AntL, s. v. Servus, pp. 867, 873. 

f It should not be " his own servants ;" for there is no emphasis here on the 
litovs. It is only the same misuse that in later Latin has proprius for suus or ejus. 
So Matt. xxii. 5, cbrfjA^ej' els rhu Tbiov aypSv. 

$ And. Oper. Imperf. y Horn. 53 : Ad Patrem iturus, peregre se iturum dicit 
propter caritatem sanctorum, quos relinquebat in terris, cum magis peregre esset 
in mundo. 



222 THE TALENTS. 

all. While, too, it has relation first to spiritual gifts and capacities, 
yet it has not therefore no relation to those other gifts and endowments, 
as wealth, reputation, ability, which, though not in themselves spiritual, 
are yet given to men that they may be turned to spiritual ends, — are 
capable of being sanctified to the Lord, and consecrated to his service, 
and for the use or abuse of which, the possessors will have also to render 
an account. There is, indeed, a witness for this in our English word 
u talent" which has come to signify any mental endowments, faculties, 
or powers whatever, a use which is of course entirely the growth of this 
parable, even as it is a proof of the manner in which it has worked itself 
into the thoughts and language of men. 

But different men receive these gifts in very different proportions : 
" Unto one lie gave five talents, to another tivo, and to another one ; to 
every man according to his several ability."* It is not that the gifts, as 
Theophylact explains it, were to each " according to the measure of his 
faith and purity," for the faith which purifies is itself one of the chiefest 
of these gifts : but to each according to his ability, inasmuch as the natu- 
ral is the ground upon which the spiritual is superinduced, and grace 
does not dissolve the groundwork of the individual character, nor abolish 
all its peculiarities, nor bring all that are subject to it to a common 
standard. (See 1 Cor. xii. 4-31 ; Ephes. iv. 16.) The natural gifts are 
as the vessel, which may be large or may be small, and which receives 
according to its capacity ;f but which in each case is filled ; so that we 
are not to think of him who had received the two talents, as incompletely 
furnished in comparison with him that had received the five, any more 
than we should affirm a small circle incomplete as compared with a large. 
Unfitted he might be for so wide a sphere of labor, but altogether as 
perfectly equipped for that to which he was destined : for " there are 
diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit," — and as the body is not all eye, 
nor are all in an army generals or captains,! so neither in the Church 
are all furnished to be leaders and governors. Yet while we speak of 
natural capacity as being the vessel for receiving the wine of the Spirit, 
we must not leave out of account, that comparative unfaithfulness, stop- 
ping short indeed of that which would cause the gift to be quite taken 
away, will yet narrow the vessel; even as fidelity has this tendency^ 
to dilate it, so that the person with far inferior natural gifts yet often 



* Cajetan : Disponit siquidem Deus in Ecclesia suaviter omnia : neniinem onerat 
supra vires, nulli negat donum congruum suis viribus. 

•j- Jerome : Christus doctrinam Evangelicam tradidit, non pro largitate et par- 
citate alteri plus, et altcri minus tribuens, sed pro accipien tum viribus ; quomodd 
et apostolus eos qui solidum cibum capere non poterant, lacte potasse se dicit. 

X See Clemens Rom. ad Corinth., c, 37, where this comparison is used. 



THE TALENTS. 223 

brings in a far more abundant harvest, than one with superior powers, 
who yet does bring in something. 

Having thus committed the talents to his servants, and divided wisely 
unto each according to his several powers, the lord, without more delay, 
" straightway took his journey -." In the things earthly the householder's 
distribution of the gifts naturally and of necessity precedes his departure ; 
in the heavenly it is not altogether so ; the Ascension, or departure, goes 
before Pentecost, or the distribution of gifts ; yet the " straightway " still 
remains in full force : the interval between them was the smallest, one 
following hard upon the other, however the order was reversed. The 
three verses which follow (17-19) embrace the whole period intervening 
between the first and second coming of Christ. Two of the servants, 
those to whom the largest moneys have been committed, lay out those 
sums with diligence and success. These are the representatives of all 
that are diligent and faithful in their office and ministry, whatsoever that 
may be. There is this variation between our parable and St. Luke's, 
that here the faithful servants multiply their unequal sums in the same 
proportions : " He that had received tliefive talents, made them otlverfive 
talents" and again, B he that had received the two, he also gained other 
two;" — while there they multiply their equal sums in different propor- 
tion ; all had alike received a pound, but one gained with that pound ten 
pounds, and another five. Two most important truths are thus brought 
out, as it could not have conveniently been done in a single narration — 
first by St. Matthew this truth, that according as we have received will 
it be expected from us— and this secondly by St. Luke, that as men dif- 
fer in fidelity, in zeal, in labor, so will they differ in the amount of their 
spiritual gains. — But if two of the servants were thus faithful in the 
things committed to them, it was otherwise with the third ; u He that 
had received one " talent, " went and digged in the earth, and hid his 
lord's money " — an apt image for the failing to use divinely imparted 
gifts, for -Wisdom that is hid, and treasure that is hoarded up, what 
profit is in them both ? Better is he that hideth his folly, than a man 
that hideth his wisdom."* (Sirach, xx. 30, 31.) In St. Luke he hides 
his pound in a napkin, but that would have been impossible with so large 

* Compare Shakspeare :— 

" Heaven does with us, as we with torches do : 
Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues 
, Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched 

But for fine issues : nor Nature never lends 

The smallest scruple of her excellence, 

But like a thrifty goddess she determines 

Herself the glory of a creditor, 

Both thanks and use." 



224 THE TALENTS. 

a sum as a talent, which is, therefore, more fitly said to have "been con 
cealed in the earth.* 

" After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and recJconeth 
with them" In the joyful coming forward of the faithful servants, we 
see an example of boldness in the day of judgment : they had something 
to show, as Paul so earnestly desired that he might have, when he said 
to his beloved Thessalonian converts, " What is our hope, or joy, or crown 
of rejoicing ? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ 
at his coming?" (1 Thess. ii. 19; 2 Cor. i. 14; Phil. iv. 1.) In St. 
Matthew the faithful servant comes forward, saying, " Behold, I have 
gained" while in St. Luke it is, " Thy pound hath gained;" thus be- 
tween them they make up the speech of St. Paul, " I — yet not I, but the 
grace of God that was with me." And even in St. Matthew, " I have 
gained " is preceded by that other word " thou deliveredst me ; " it is only 
thy gift which I have so multiplied. In St. Matthew, as has been ob- 
served, the gain is according to the talents, five for five, and two for two. 
Consistently with this, the commendation of the servants is expressed in 
exactly the same language, even as the reward to each is precisely the 
same : to each it is said, " Enter thou, into the joy of thy Lord"] that 
is, become a sharer of my joy. No doubt the image underlying this 
language is, that the master celebrates his return by a great festival, to 
which each of the servants, as soon as he has rendered his accounts, and 
shown that he has been true to his master's interests in his absence, is 
bidden freely to enter. It is well known that under certain circumstances 
the master's inviting his slave to sit down with him at table, did itself 
constitute the act of manumission ; henceforth he was free.J Perhaps 



* Jerome (Ad Damas.) finds a further distinction between hiding in the earth 
and in a napkin : Hoc talentum non est in sudario colligandum, id est, delicate 
otioseque tractandura, nee in terra defodiendum, terrenis scilicet cogitationibus 
obscurandum. 

t Leighton's words on this entering into the joy of the Lord are beautiful : " It 
is but little we can receive here, some drops of joy that enter into us, but there we 
shall enter into joy, as vessels put into a sea of happiness." Gerhard has the same 
thought : Tarn magnum enim erit illud gaudium, ut non possit in homine conclu- 
di vel ab co comprehendi, ideo homo intrat in illud incomprehensibile gaudium, 
non autem intrat illud in hominem velut ab homine comprehensum ; and H. de 
Sto. Victore (Enid. Theol., 1. 3) says on this joy of the Lord : Triplex est gaudium : 
est gaudium seculi, est gaudium tuum, est gaudium Domini tui. Primum est de 
tcrrena affluentia : secundum de bona conscientia : tertium de scternitatis experi- 
entia. Non igitur exeas in gaudium seculi. non remaneas in gaudio tuo, sed intres 
gaudium Domini tui . . . Ad primum exivit homo, com cecidit de paradiso : ad 
secundum venire incipit, ctim per fidem reconciliatus Deo. Tunc autem ad tertium 
perveniet, cam videndo ipsum sicuti est in gcternum frueter ipso. 

X See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. AntL, s. v. Manumissio, p. 596. 



THE TALENTS. 225 

there may be here allusion to something of the kind — the incorporation 
in an act of what once he had spoken in words, " Henceforth I call you 
not servants, . . but I have called you friends." ( John xv. 15; Luke 
xii. 37; Rev. Hi. 20.) 

But there remains one who has not yet given in his account, and it 
has been often observed how solemn a warning there is, and to how many> 
in the fact, that he to whom only the one talent had been committed, is 
the one who is found faulty — since an excuse like the following might 
very easily occur to such : " So little is committed to my charge, that it 
matters not how I administer that little ; at the best I cannot do much 
for God's glory ; what signifies the little, whether it be done or left un- 
done?" But here we are instructed that the Lord looks for fidelity in 
little as well as in much.* We can well understand why he should 
have lingered to the last, being reluctant to appear in the presence of his 
lord. It is true that he had not wasted his master's goods like the Un- 
just Steward, nor spent all his portion in riotous living like the Prodigal,, 
nor was he ten thousand talents in debt like the Unmerciful Servant ; 
and it is an entire mistake to mix up his case with theirs, when it should 
be kept entirely distinct. The consequence of such confounding his guili 
with theirs would be, that the very persons whose consciences the para- 
ble was meant to reach would evade its force. When we weave the 
meshes of the spiritual net so large, all but the very worst offenders are 
able to slip through : and the parable is not for such, not for those that 
are evidently by their lives and actions denying that they count Christ 
to be their Lord and Master at all : it is not for them who thus squander 
their talent, or deny that they have ever received one : the law, and their 
own heaits, tell them sufficiently plainly of their sin and danger. But 
the warning we have here is for them who hide their talent, who being 
equipped for a sphere of activity in the kingdom of Grod, do yet choose, 
to use Bacon's words, " a goodness solitary and particular, rather than 
generative and seminal." There is great danger that such might deceive 
themselves, as there are so many temptations to a shrinking from the 
labor and the toil involved in a diligent laying out of our talent. There 
is a show of humility in the excuses that a person so inclined would 
make ; as for instance, " The care of my own soul is sufficient to occupy 
me wholly ; — the responsibility of any spiritual work is so great, so awful, 
that I dare not undertake it ; — while I am employed about the souls of 
others, I may perhaps be losing my own." We read repeatedly of those 
in the early Church, who on grounds like these, persisted in refusing 

* Grotius : In eo cui minimum erat concreditum negligentise exemplum posuit 
Chriutus, ne quis speraret excusatum se iri ab omni labore, ideo quod non eximia 
dona accepisset. 

15 



226 THE TALENTS. 

charges to which they were called, and when they should have been th« 
salt to salt the earth, chose rather to retire into caves and wildernesses, 
forsaking their brethren, whom they were called to serve in the active 
ministries of love.* 

The warning then is addressed to such as might be tempted to fol- 
low after this goodness solitary and particular, instead of serving their 
generation according to the will of God. The root out of which this 
mischief grows is laid bare in the words which this slothful servant utters, 
" Lord , I knew thee that thou art a hard man" It has its rise, as 
almost every thing else that is evil, in a false view of the character of 
God. For we must not understand this speech as an excuse framed 
merely for the occasion, but it is the true out-speaking of the inmost 
heart, the exact expression of the aspect in which the servant did actu- 
ally regard his lord. The churl accounted him churlish, thought him 
even such an one as himself: he did not believe in his lord's forgiving 
love, and in his gracious acceptance of the work with all its faults, 
which was done for him out of a true heart, and with a sincere desire to 
please him. This was his wilful and guilty ignorance concerning the 
true character of the master whom he was called to serve. But to know 
God's name is to trust in him. They indeed who undertake a ministry 
in his Church, or any work for him, are well aware that they shall com- 
mit manifold mistakes in that ministry, which they might avoid, if they 
declined that ministry altogether, — even many sins in handling divine 
things which they might escape, if they wholly refused that charge.f 

* Augustine, in a sermon preached on the anniversary of his exaltation to the 
episcopal dignity (Serm. 339, c. 3), makes striking use of this parable, while he is 
speaking of the temptation, whereof he was conscious, to withdraw from the active 
labor in the Church, and to cultivate a solitary piety : Si non erogem, et pecuniam 
servem, terret me Evangelium. Possem enim dicere : Quid mihi est taedio esse 
hominibus, dicere iniquis, Iniqufe agere nolite, sic agite, sic agere desistite 1 Quid 
mihi est oneri esse hominibus 'J Accepi quomodo vivam, quomodo jussus sum, 
quomodo prseceptus sum, assignem quomodo accepi ; de aliis me reddere rationem 
qu6 mihi 1 Evangelium me terret. Nam ad istam securitatem otiosissimam nemo 
me vinceret : nihil est melius, nihil dulcius, quam divinum scrutari, nullo strepente, 
thesaurum ; dulce est, bonum est. Pradicare, arguere, corripere, sedificare, pro 
unoquoque satagere, magnum onus, magnum pondus, magnus labor. Quis non re- 
fugiat istum laborem ? Sed terret Evangelium. And again {In Ev. Joh., Tract. 
10) : Si autem fueris frigidus, marcidus, ad te solum spectans, et quasi tibi suffi- 
ciens, et dicens in corde tuo : Quid mihi est curare aliena peccata, sufficit mihi anima 
mea, ipsam integram servem Deo : Eja non tibi venit in mentem servus ille qui 
abscondit talentum et noluit erogare 1 nunquid enim accusatus est, quia perdidit, 
et non quia sine lucro servavit 1 Compare what he beautifully says, Enar. in Ps. 
xcix. 2 ; and also De Fide et Oper., c. 17. 

t This sense of the careful and accurate handling which all divine things re- 
quire, and the exceeding gravity of a fault therein, though very liable of being 



THE TALENTS. 227 

But shall those who are competently furnished and evidently called, be 
therefore justified or excused in doing so? would they not, so acting 
share in the condemnation of this servant 7 would they not testify there- 
by that they thought of God, as he thought of his master — that he was 
a hard* lord — extreme to mark what was amiss — making no allow- 
ances, accepting never the will for the deed, but watching to take ad- 
vantage of the least failure or mistake on the part of his servants ? 

Nor does the sluggard in the parable stop here. If only he may roll 
off a charge from himself, he cares not for affixing one to his lord. In 
his speech, half cowering and half defying, and in this respect, a wonder- 
ful picture of the sinner's bearing towards God, he shrinks not from 
attributing to him the character of a harsh unreasonable despot, who 
requires the bricks but refuses the straw (Exod. v. 7), who would reap 
what he has not sown, and gather whence he has not strawed.f In these 
words he gives evidence that he as entirely has mistaken the nature of 
the work to which he was called, as the character of the master for whom 
it should have been done.J In the darkness of his heart he regards the 



pleaded as here by the slothful and the false-hearted, and ever needing, even when 
most true, to he balanced by other thoughts concerning God, is yet in itself a high 
grace, and has a word of its own to express it, evXafeia, from e5 Xafifiduay, those 
divine things being contemplated as costly yet delicate vessels, which must needs 
be handled with extreme wariness and even fear. 

* The aicXnpSs here is stronger than the avo-rmpSs of Luke xix. 21 ; that word 
being sometimes used in a good sense, which this is never ; thus Plutarch : ?iv <r4- 
(ppuv x.aX av<m}p6s. This last is an epithet properly applied to fruit or wine, which 
is crude, unripe, sour, wanting in mellowness, and would find its opposite in x/"7 ff - 
t6s (Luke v. 39), so the Latin austerus continually, which is opposed to the dulcis. 
But an\r\p6s is an epithet given to a surface which is at once dry and hard, as 
through drought, involving alike the asper and the durus, and is opposed to /j.a\a- 
k6s and vypSs. Nabal is <ric\wpbs Kal irovt]p6s (1 Sam. xxv. 3, LXX.) churlish and 
evil. Terence (Adelph., v. 4), unfolds the ffK\yp6s, when he describes one as Tristis, 
parcus, truculentus, tenax The words are discriminated in Titmann's Synonyms, 
c. 10. 

•f- " Strawcd" does not refer to the strewing of the seed, for then he would but 
be saying the same thing twice. Rather there is a step in the process of the har- 
vest. " Where thou hast not strawed," or better, scattered with the fan on the barn 
floor, there expectest thou to "gather" with the rake : as one who will not be at 
the trouble to purge away the chaff, yet expects to gather in the golden grains into 
his store. (Matt. iii. 12.) At€<rK6piri<ras, the word here used, could scarcely be ap- 
plied to the measured and orderly scattering of the sower's seed. It is rather the 
dispersing, making to fly in every direction, as a pursuer the routed enemy (Luke 
i. 51 ; Acts v. 37) ; or as the wolf the sheep (Matt. xxvi. 31), or as the Prodigal his 
goods (Luke xv. 13 ; xvi. 1) ; or as here, the husbandman the chaff. Thus rightly 
Schott on this 5t€«r/cJpir<(ros : Notionem ventilandi frumentum in area repositum 
exprimit. 

$ Aquinas asserts well the true doctrine, which this servant denies : Deus nihil 



228 THE TALENTS. 

work as something outward — as something to be done for God, instead of 
being a work to be wrought in him, or rather, which he would work in 
and through his servants. He thought that God called to a labor, and 
gave no ability for the labor, — that he laid on a task, which was a mere 
task, and put no joy nor consolation into the hearts of them that fulfilled 
it : no wonder then that he should shrink from it. Thus, he goes on 
to say, "I was afraid;"* he justifies the caution and timidity which 
he had shown, and how it was that he would attempt nothing and 
venture upon nothing : he feared to trade on that talent, lest in the 
necessary risks of buisness, seeking to gain other he might lose that 
one, and so enrage his master against him ; even as men might profess 
to fear to lay themselves out for the winning of other souls, lest, so 
doing, they might endanger their own, — u Lo, tliere thou hast that is 
thine. n \ Here it might be asked, how could God's gifts be hidden, and 
yet restored to him entire ; since the suffering them to lie idle is in fact 
one form of wasting them 1 In reality they could not be so restored. 
It is only that men imagine they can be given back, when they suppose 
that keeping the negative precepts' is all that God requires of them, and 
that doing this they will restore to him his gifts entire, as they received 
them.J ' 

requirit ab hoinine nisi boiram quod ipse in nobis seminavit ; and Augustine, put- 
ting the same truth in the form of a prayer : Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis. 

* Hilary (Comm. in Matt/i., in loc.) has a remarkable use of the words <! J was 
afraid." It is, he says, the voice of them that choose to abide, as the Jew, in the 
law and in the spirit of bondage, shrinking from the liberty and activity of Chris- 
tian service : Timui te, tanquam per reverentiam et metum veterum praBceptorum 
usu Evangelicse libertatis abstineat. 

f Cocceius : Jactatio superba conservati talenti significat fiduciam et securita* 
tern ejus qui sibi facile satisfacit. See Suicer's Thes. s. v. raXavTov. 

X There is an instructive Eastern tale, which in its deeper meaning runs re- 
markably parallel to this parable. It is as follows : 

There went a man from home : and to his neighbors twain 

He gave, to keep for him, two sacks of golden grain. 

Deep in his cellar one the precious charge concealed j 

And forth the other went and strewed it in his field. 

The man returns at last — asks of the first his sack : 

" Here take it ; 'tis the same ; thou hast it safely back." 

Unharmed it shows without ; but when he would explore 

His sack's recesses, corn there finds he now no more : 

One half of what was there proves rotten and decayed, 

Upon the other half have worm and mildew preyed. 

The .putrid heap to him in ire he doth return, 

Then of the other asks, " Where is my sack of corn?' 

Who answered, " Come with me and see how it has sped" — 

And took and showed him fields with waving harvests spread 

Then cheerfully the man lairghed out and cried, " This one 

Had insight, to make up for the other that had none. 

The letter he observed, but thou the precept's sense, 

And thus to thee and me shall profit grow from hence ; 

In harvest thou shalt fill two sacks of corn for me, 

The residue of right remains in full for thee*" 



THE TALENTS. 229 

But his lord answers him on his own grounds, and making his own 
mouth condemn him (Job. xv. 6 ; 2 Sam. i. 16) ; nor does he take the 
trouble to dispute or deny the truth of the character which his servant 
had given him : — -'- Thou wicked and slothful servant ;" " ivicked" in 
that he defended himself by calumniating his lord, and "slothful" as his 
whole conduct has shown, "thou knewest that I reap wliere I sowed not, 
and gather where I had not strawed ; — that is, Be it so, grant me to be 
such as thou describest, severe and exacting, yet even then thou art not 
cleared, for thou oughtest to have done me justice still; and there was a 
safe way, by which thou mightest have done this, with little or no peril 
to thyself; and thereby have obtained for me, if not the large ^ains, which 
were possible through some bolder course, yet something, some small but 
certain return for my moneys ; — T/wu oughtest, tliereforc, to have put my 
money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received 
mine oion with usury."* This putting the money to the exchangers, 
Olshausen ingeniously explains : " Those timid natures which are not 
suited to independent labor in the kingdom of God, are here counselled 
at least to attach themselves to other stronger characters, under whose 
leading they may lay out their gifts to the service of the Church."f 



* 2w to/co), with increase. So fenus is explained by Varro, a fetu et quasi a 
fetura quadam pecuniae parientis atque increscentis. To estimate how great the 
master's gains even in this way might have been, we must keep in mind the high 
rates of interest paid in antiquity. Sec the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Inte- 
rest of Money, p. 523; and see also the lively chapter in Becker's Charikles, v. 1, 
p. 237, for a graphic description of the TpaTreCirai, the bankers of antiquity. 

f Cajetan has nearly the same explanation : Intendit per hoc, quod si non 
ausus fuit uti dono Dei in actionibus multi periculi, uti tamen debuit illo, in actio- 
nibus in quibus est lucrum cum parvo periculo. Teelman (Comm. in Laic, xvi.) 
has a curious explanation of this giving the money to the rpaire^rai, starting from 
the notion that the business of these money-changers was in itself and necessarily 
unfair ; " If you thought me this unfair man, why were you not consistent 1 — why 
did you not seek for me the gains which you must then have supposed would have 
been welcome to me %" not saying this as though he would have had him so to 
have done, but only convicting him of conduct inconsistent with his own assertions: 
— It is an interesting question, whether the saying so often quoted in the early 
Church as our Lord's, and not any where to be found in the New Testament, TtVe- 
<r&e Z6ki}xoi (or Ka\o(, or <pp6vifxoi) rpa-K^lrai, has its origin here. Many have 
thought they found it in this passage, but it is difficult to see on what ground, ex- 
cept that the word Tpair^lrai here occurs. The point of that exhortation is evi- 
dently this : Be as experienced money-changers, who readily distinguish the good 
from the bad coin, receiving the one but rejecting the other. Now in this parable, 
there is no direct or indirect comparison of the disciples with money-changers, and 
such an exhortation lies wholly aloof from its aim and scope. The words can as 
little be said to be implicitly contained in the parable, as they can to be plainly 
read in the text, though it is true that Suicer (Thes., s. v. TpaireCiTris), defends this 
view. The precept would be much more easily deduced from 1 Thess. v. 21, 22 ; 



230 THE TALENTS. 

This explanation has the advantage that it makes these words nol 
merely useful to add vivacity to the narrative, as the natural exclama- 
tion of an offended master, — but gives them likewise a spiritual signifi- 
cance, which is not generally sought in them, "but which, if they yield it 
easily and naturally, must by no means be rejected. Certainly this 
meaning is better than that which Jerome proposes, that the money- 
changers are believers in general, to whom the intrusted word of grace 
should have been committed, that they, trying it, and rejecting any 
erroneous doctrine which might be admingled with ?t, but holding fast 
what was good, might be enriched with the knowledge of God. Such 
can hardly be the meaning, for that is the very thing which the servant 
ought to have done in the first instance, boldly to have laid out his gift 
for the profit and edification of his .brethren ; while this of committing 
the talent to the money-changers is only the alternative proposed to him, 
in case he had shrunk from that other and more excellent way. 

And hereupon, his doom who neither in one way or the other had 
sought his master's interests, is pronounced ; it consists first, in the loss 
of the talent which he had suffered to lie idle, — " Take, therefore, tlie 
talent from him. v * We have here a limitation of Rom. xi. 29. This 
deprivation may be considered partly as the directly penal, and partly 
as the natural consequence of his sloth. For there is this analogy 
between the course of things in the natural and in the spiritual world, 
that as a limb which is never called into exercise loses its strength by 
degrees — its muscles and sinews disappear, — even so the gifts of God, 
unexercised, fade and fail from us : "From him that hath not shall be 
taken away even that which he Iiatk. 11 * And on the other contrary, as 

even as we find ytv, SSk. rpair. sometimes called an apostolic saying, attributed by 
many of the Fathers not to the Lord but to one of his apostles, or to St. Paul by 
name, and by some, indeed, even inserted before this very passage, — for examples, 
see Suicer ; and the whole question is thoroughly discussed by Hansel, in the 
Theol. Stud, und Krit., for 1836, p. 179. He maintains this latter origin of the 
words. See also Cotelerii Patt. Apostol, v. 1, p. 249, and the Annott. in Euseb., 
Oxford, 1842, v. 1, p. 930. — There being mention of interest here, TpaTrsgm)? is the 
fitter word than KoAAujSio-T^s, which, however, rightly finds place, Matt. xxi. 12 ; 
Mark xi. 15. Jerome (Comm. in Matth. xxi. 12, 13,) has a singular, but erroneous 
derivation of the last word. 

* Augustine asks here (Enarr. in Ps. xxxviii. 4) : Quid exspectare debent, qui 
cum luxuria consumserunt, si damnatur qui cum pigritia servaverunt 1 And again, 
Intelligatur poena interversoris ex poena pigri. 

f Chrysostom {De Christ. Prec, Con. Anom., 10) has two other comparisons, to 
set forth that the grace unused will quickly depart : " For as the corn, if it be let 
lie for ever in the barns, is consumed, being devoured of the worm ; but if it is 
brought forth and cast into the field, is multiplied and renewed again : so also the 
spiritual word, if it be evermore shut up within the soul, being consumed and 
eaten into by envy and sloth, and decay, is quickly extinguished j but, if, as on a 



THE TALENTS. 231 

the limb is not wasted "by strenuous exertion, but rather by it nerved 
and strengthened, not otherwise is it also with the gifts of God ; they 
are multiplied by being laid out : " Unto every one that hath shall be 
given, and he shall have abundance.' 11 "The earth which bringeth 
forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing," 
that is, a farther blessing, the gift of a continued fruitfulness "from 
God." (Heb. vi. 7.) Nor is it merely that the one receives more, and 
the other loses what he had ; but that very gift which the one loses the 
other receives; he is enriched with a talent taken from the other; while 
on his part, another takes his crown. We see this continually; one by 
the providence of God steps into the place and the opportunities which 
another left unused, and so has forfeited. (1 Sam. xv. 28.) 

For this taking away of the unused talent which will find its com- 
plete consummation at the day of judgment, yet is also in this present 
time continually going forward. And herein is mercy, that it is not done 
all at once, but by little and little, so that till all is withdrawn, there is 
still the opportunity of recovering all : at each successive withdrawal, 
there is some warning to hold fast what still is left, " to strengthen the 
things which remain that are ready to die." It is quite true that at each 
successive stage of the decline, the effort required for this is greater, — 
the strength for it less : but to complain of this, is to complain that sin 
is sin, that it has any curse with it ; and however this is the mournful 
truth, yet, at the same time, it remains always possible, till the last spark 
is extinguished, to blow up that spark again into a flame: even the sense 
of the increasing darkness may be that which shall arouse the man to a 
serious sense of his danger, and to the need of an earnest revival of 
God's work in his soul. But this servant had never awoke to the sense 



fertile field, it is scattered on the souls of the brethren, the treasure is multiplied 
to them that receive it, and to him that possessed it ; — and as a fountain from 
which water is continually drawn forth, is thereby rather purified, and bubbles up 
the more ; but being stanched fails altogether, so the spiritual gift and word of 
doctrine, if it be continually drawn forth, and if who will has liberty to share it, 
rises up the more ; but if restrained by envy and a grudging spirit, diminishes, and 
at last perishes altogether." — Augustine too, (or Caesarius, as the Benedictine 
editors affirm, August. Opp., v. 5, p. 81, Appendix) has an admirable discourse on 
the manner in which gifts multiply through being imparted, and diminish through 
being withholden. It is throughout an application of the story of the widow (2 
Kin. iv.) whose two sons Elisha redeemed from bondage, by multiplying the oil 
which she had in her single vessel so long as she provided other vessels into which \ 
to pour it, but which, when she had no more, at once stopped : — et ait Scriptura 
stetisse oleum, posteaquam ubi poneret, non invenit. Sic, dilectissimi fratres, tan- 
diu caritas augetur quandiu tribuitur. Et ideo etiam ex industria debemus vasa 
quoerere, ubi oleum possumus infundere, quia probavimus quod dum aliis infundi- 
mus, plus habemus. Vasa caritatis, homines sunt. 



232 THE TALENTS. 

of his danger till it was too late, — till all was irrevocably lost ; and now 
it is said, not merely that he shall forfeit his talent, but yet further, 
"Cast ye tlie unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be 
veiling and gnashing of teeth" "While there is light and joy and 
feasting within, to celebrate the master's return, the darkness without 
shall be his portion. 

The comparison of the causes which led to this servant's exclusion, 
and those which led to the exclusion of the foolish virgins, is full of 
important instruction for all; the virgins erred through a vain over- 
confidence, this servant through an under-confidence that was equally 
vain and sinful. They were overbold, he was not bold enough. Thus, 
as in a chart, the two temptations, as regards our relation to God and his 
service, — the two opposing rocks on which faith is in danger of making 
shipwreck, are laid down for us, that we may avoid them both. Those 
virgins thought it too easy a thing to serve the Lord, — this servant 
thought it too hard ; — they esteemed it but as the going forth to a 
festival which should presently begin, he as a hard, dreary, insupport- 
able work for a thankless master. In them, we have the perils that 
beset the sanguine, in him the melancholic, complexion. They were 
representatives of a class needing such warnings as this : " Strait is the 
gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that 
find it" (Matt. vii. 14)j "Work out your own salvation with fear and 
trembling" (Phil. ii. l&jl; "If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself" (Matt. xv$$4). He was representative of a class that 
would need to be reminded: "Ye have not received the spirit of 
bondage again to fe v ar" (Rom. viii. 15); "Ye are not come unto the 
mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto 

blackness, and darkness, and tempest ; but ye are come unto 

Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, and to Jesus, 

the Mediator of the new Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that 
jpeaketh better things than that of Abel" (Heb. xii, 18, 22, 24). 



XV. 

THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. 

Mark iv. 26-29. 

Tins is the only parable which is peculiar to St. Mark. Like that of 
the Leaven, of which it seems to occupy the place, it declares the secret 
invisible energy of the divine word, — that it has life in itself, and will 
unfold itself according to the law of its own being ; and besides what it 
has in common with that parable, declares further, that this word of the 
kingdom has that in it which will allow it safely to be left to itself. 
The main difficulty in the parable is the following: Whom shall we 
understand by the man casting seed in the ground ? — is it the Son of 
man himself, or those who in subordination to him declare the Gospel 
of the kingdom? There are embarrassments attending either explana- 
tion. If we say that the Lord points to himself as the sower of the seed, 
how then shall we explain ver. 27 ? — it cannot be said of him that he 
knows not how* the seed sown in the hearts of his people springs and 
grows up ; since it is only his continual presence by his Spirit in their 
hearts which causes it to grow at all. Neither can he fitly be compared 
to a sower who, having scattered his seed, goes his way and occupies 
himself in other business, feeling that it lies henceforth beyond -the 
sphere of his power to further the prosperity of the seed, but that it 
must be left to itself, and its own indwelling powers, and that his part 
will not begin again till the time of the harvest has come round. This 
is no fit description of him, who is not merely the author and finisher of 
our faith, but who also conducts it through all its intermediate stages : 
and without whose blessing and active co-operation it would be totally 
unable to make any, even the slightest, progress. Or on the other hand, 

* It is a poor way to get out of this difficulty to say with Erasmus, that, "he 
knoweth not how," ought rather to be, " it knoweth not how," — that is, the seed 
knoweth not how it grows itself; since, as no one could have supposed that it did, 
who would think of denying it 1 



234 THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY 

shall we say that the sower of the seed is here one of the inferior 
ministers and messengers of the truth, and that the purpose of tho 
parable is to teach such, that after the word of life, of which they are 
bearers, has found place in any heart, they may be of good confidence, 
trusting to its own powers to unfold itself, for it has a life of its own, — 
a life independent of .him who may have been the original instrument 
for the communication of that life, even as a child, after it is born, has a 
life no longer dependent on that of the parents, from which yet it was 
originally derived ? But then, with this explanation, there is another 
and not slighter difficulty ; for at ver. 29 it is said, " wlien t/ie fruit is 
brought forth, immediately he " (the same person clearly who sowed 
the seed) a putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." Of whom 
can it be said, save of the Son of man, the Lord of the harvest, that he 
putteth in the sickle, — that he gathereth his people, when they are ripe 
for glory, — when they have finished their course, — when the work of 
faith has been accomplished in their hearts, — into everlasting habita- 
tions ? So that the perplexity is this, — If we say that the Lord means 
himself by the principal personage in the parable, then something is 
attributed to him which seems unworthy of him, less than to him rightly 
appertains ; while if, on he other hand, we take him to mean those that, 
in subordination to himself, are bearers of his word, then something 
more, a higher prerogative, as it would seem, is attributed, than can be 
admitted to belong rightly to any, save only to him.* I cannot see any 
perfectly satisfactory way of escape from this perplexity. It will hardly 
do to say, for the purpose of evading the embarrassments which beset the 
first explanation, that the circumstances' mentioned at ver. 27, are not to 
be pressed, and that they belong, not to the body itself, but only to the 
drapery, of the parable ; for clearly there, — in the sower absenting him- 
self after he has committed the seed to the ground, and in its growing 
without him, — is the very point and moral of the whole, and to strike 
out that, would be as the striking out of its right eye, leaving it 
altogether dark. 

Not admitting then this too convenient explanation, I will yet take 
the parable as having reference in the first place, though not exclusively, 
to the Lord himself, the great Sower of the seed, and it will then remain 
to see how far the acknowledged difficulties are capable of being removed 
or mitigated. It commences thus : — " So is tlie kingdom of God, as if 
a man slwuld cast seed into tJie ground, and should sleep, and rise night 
and day." By these last words it is agreed among interpreters, — old 

* It would be unjust to deprive Strauss {Leben Jesu, v. 1, p. 664) of the glory 
of his theory concerning this parable, — namely, that it is another and imperfect 
version of that of the Tares, only with the circumstance of the tares left out ! 



THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. 235 

and new, almost without exception, — that is signified not his carefulness 
after having sown the seed, but his absence of such an after-careful* 
ness ;*. he does not think it necessary to keep watch over his seed after 
it has been cast on the ground, but he sleeps securely by night, and by 
day he rises and goes about his ordinary business, leaving with full con- 
fidence the seed to itself ; which meanwhile " should spring and groio 
up, lie knoivcth not how 11 These words have no difficulty, — on the con- 
trary, are full of most important instruction, — so long as we apply them, 
as no doubt we fairly may, to those who under Christ are teachers in his 
Church. They are here implicitly bidden to have faith in the word 
which they preach, — in the seed which they sow, for it is the seed of 
God ; when it has found place in a heart, they are not to be tormented 
with anxiety concerning the final issue, but rather to have confidence in 
its indwelling power and might,f not supposing that it is they who are 
to keep it alive, and that it can only live through them ; for this of 
maintaining its life is God's part and not theirs, and he undertakes to 
fulfil it. They are instructed also to rest satisfied that the seed should 
grow and spring up without their knowing exactly how ; let them not be 
searching at its roots to see how they have stricken into the soil, nor seek 
prematurely to anticipate the shooting of the hh e, or the forming of the 
corn in the ear ; — for the mystery of the life of God in any and in every 
heart is unfathomable, — any attempt to determine that its course shall bo 
this way, or shall be that way, is only mischievous. It has a law, indeed, 
for its orderly development, "first the blade, tlien the ear, tlien tlie full 
corn in the ear, 11 but that law is hidden ; and as manifold as are the 
works of God in nature, so that they never exactly repeat themselves, so 
manifold also are they in grace. Therefore let the messengers of the 
Gospel be content that the divine word should grow in a mysterious 



* So Pole (Synops., in loc,) in a passage woven out of several commentators : 
Semente facta transigit securus noctes et dies, segetem Deo committens, nee dubi- 
tans quin germinet, ipse agens alia vitse munia. The only interpreter that I know, 
who takes an opposite view, is Theophylact, who understands the rising night and 
day to mark the continual watchfulness of Christ over his Church. But what then 
will the sleeping mean 1 and, moreover, this explanation goes directly contrary to 
the whole aim and purpose of the parable. 

-f- Calvin brings forward this side of the truth, though an important one, yet too 
exclusively, when he thus explains the parable: Sermonem ad verbi ministros 
dirigit. ne frigidius muneri suo incumbant quia non statim laboris fructus apparet 
Ergo illis agricolas ad imitandum proponit, qui sub spe metendi semen in terrain 
•projiciunt, neque anxia inquietudine torquentur, sed eunt cubitum et surgunt, hoc 
est, pro more intenti sunt quotidiano labori, et se nocturna quiete reficiunt, donee 
tandem suo tempore maturescat seges. Ergo quamvis verbi semen ad tempus suf- 
focatum lateat, jubet tamen Christus bono animo esse pios doctores, ne diffidentia 
illis alacritatem minuat. 



236 THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. 

manner, and one of which the processes are hidden from them, and 
believing that it is a Divine power and not a human, let them be of 
good courage concerning the issue, and having sown the seed, commit 
the rest to God in faith, being confident that he will bring his own work 
to perfection. Of course this is not meant as though they are not to 
follow up the work which has been through their instrumentality com- 
menced. For, as when it is said " the earth bringeth forth fruit of 
herself" this does not exclude the rain, and sun, and all other favorable 
influences, so neither, when we say that the seed of God implanted in 
any heart has life of its own, is it hereby implied that it will not require 
the nourishment suitable for it, — nay, rather it is affirmed that it will 
require it ; were it a dead thing it would require nothing of the kind, 
but because it is living, it has need of that whereon it may feed. But 
then it is a different thing to impart life, and to impart the sustenance 
for life : this latter the Church has still to do for her children, but then 
it is in faith that they have a life of their own once given, and con- 
tinually maintained from on high, by which they can assimilate to 
themselves this spiritual food provided for them, and draw nutriment 
from it. 

But it still remains to consider, in what sense that which is said of 
leaving the seed to itself can be affirmed of Christ. Olshausen suggests 
this explanation of the difficulties above noted. It is true, he says, that 
the inner spiritual life of men is never in any stage of its development 
without the care and watchfulness of the Lord who first communicated 
that life : yet are there two moments when he may be said especially to 
visit the soul ; at the beginning of the spiritual life, which is the seed- 
time, and again when he takes his people to himself, which is their time 
of harvest.* Between these times, lies a period in which the work of 
the Lord is going forward without any such manifest interpositions on 
his part — not indeed without the daily supply of his Spirit, and the daily 
ordering of his providence, but so as that he does not put to his hand so 
plainly and immediately as at those two cardinal moments. And the 
difficulty will be slighter when we make application of the parable, — as 



* We may compare Job v. 26 : " Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, 
like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." There, however, it is rat her said, 
that the favored of God shall not die till they have known the fulness of earthly 
blessing, till they have reached Abraham's " good old age," and (if one may use 
the image not offensively) retire as satisfied guests from life's feast. But in our 
parable, consistently with the higher dispensation which looks to higher blessings, 
it is rather affirmed, that the faithful are not taken away while yet the work of 
grace is incomplete in them, while yet Christ is not fully formed in them, that in this 
respect there is a provident love ordering their death as well as their life, that it is 
only '•'■when theftuit is brought forth," that Christ " putteth in the sickle.'" 



THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. 237 

undoubtedly we are bound to do, — to the growth and progress of the 
universal Church, and not only to that of the individual soul. The Lord 
at his first coming in the flesh sowed the word of the kingdom in the 
world, planted a Church therein, which having done he withdrew him- 
self; the heavens received him till the time of the consummation of all 
things. Many and many a time since then the cry has ascended in his 
ears, " that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come 
down !" — often it has seemed to man as though the hour of interference 
had arrived, as though his Church were at its last gasp, at the point to 
die, as though its enemies were about to prevail against it, and to extin- 
guish it for ever, unless he appeared for its deliverance. Yet he has not 
come forth, he has left it to surmount its obstacles, not indeed without 
his mighty help, but without his visible interference. He has left the 
divine seed, the plant which he has planted, to grow on by night and by 
day, through storm and through sunshine, increasing secretly with the 
increase of God ; and will let it so continue, till it has borne and brought 
to maturity all its appointed fruit. And only then, when the harvest of 
the world is ripe, when the number of his elect people is accomplished, 
will he again the second time appear unto salvation, thrusting in his 
sickle, and reaping the earth, and gathering the wheat into his barns.* 
The convenience of interpreting the parable altogether, and taking it 
in its whole object and aim at a single view, has caused one or two less 
important circumstances to be passed over, which yet it might be well 
not to leave quite without notice. "When it is said that " the earth bring- 
eth forth fruit of /ierse/f v it may excite surprise that it is not rather said, 
— The seed groweth and springeth up of itself ; for that, strictly speak- 
ing, is the doctrine which the Lord is now teaching: and if the eaith be 
here, as it must be, the heart of man, it is not there, but in the word of 
God which is sown there, that the living p )wer resides. But the Lord's 
object, in using the expression,! is pointedly to exclude the agency of 

* Grotius : Sensus mihi videtur esse perspicuus : Christum a facta, semente ad 
messis tempus agro aspectabiliter non adfuturum. 

t AvTOfidrrj. The word, derived from avrSs, and the obsolete fidca, desidero, is 
one of singular fitness and beauty. Elsewhere it occurs but once in the New Tes- 
tament. (Acts xii. 10. Cf. Josh. vi. 5, LXX.) It is often used by classic authors 
to describe the spontaneous bringing forth of the earth in the golden age, during 
the paradisiacal state anterior to the change marked Gen. iii. 17. Yet here it is 
not exactly correct to make, as has been done, the avro/za-nj 7^ =a/ca/«iTos y>) of 
Sophocles, Antig., 339 ; for leaving out of account that that does mean the earth 
which brings forth without labor, but which is never weary of bringing forth, it 
besides is not the notion of previous labor bestowed on the soil which is here ex- 
cluded—but of ulterior carefulness. In the next verse, eavrSv must be supplied 
after iraoa8$. Virgil will then have exactly the same idiom : 
Multa adeo gelida melius se nocte dederunt. 



238 THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. 

the sower, at least a continuous agency on his part of the same kind as 
he exercises at the first, and this done he is not careful for more. — The 
three stages of spiritual growth implied in " the blade" " the ear," and 
"the full corn in the ear," suggest a comparison of this passage with such 
as 1 John ii. 12-14, where the apostle in like manner divides the faithful 
into " little children," " young men," and " fathers," evidently according 
to the different degrees of progress which they have made in the spiritual 
life. — With ver. 29 we may compare Rev. xiv. 14, 15 ; and the compari- 
son supplies an additional reason why we should not rest satisfied with 
the application of the parable to any less than the Son of man himself, — 
" And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat, 
like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his 
hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying 
with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust * in thy sickle and 
reap : for the time is come for thee to reap ; for the harvest of the earth 
is ripe :" — and the entire parable gives the same encouragement which 
St. Peter means to give, when he addresses the faithful in Christ Jesus, 
as, " being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by 
the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever," and that whole pas- 
sage (1 Pet. i. 23-25) supplies a parallel than which no apter could be 
found in the entire circle of Scripture for the parable which we have 
been now considering. 

* This passage also shows us that Zpiiravov is not here, as so many say, a part 
of the whole, and in place of Sepiaras. There is no argument for this to be derived 
from the word a7ro<rreAAet here, which is not stronger than the iriy^ov there, where 
yet it is plain that the Lord is imagined as in his own person the reaper ; and com- 
pare Joel iii. 13, LXX., QairoffTelAaTe fyiirava. So in Latin, immittere falcem. 



XVI. 

THE TWO DEBTORS. 

Luke vii. 41-43. 

Vi s may affirm with tolerable certainty that the two first Evangelists 
an i the last, in all their relations of our blessed Lord's anointing, refer 
to one and the same event. (Matt. xxvi. 7 ; Mark xiv. 8 ; John xii. 3.) 
But the question whether St. Luke narrates the same circumstance, and 
the woman here, " ivhich was a sinner" be Mary the sister of Lazarus, 
which then must follow, is more difficult, and has been the subject of 
much variety of opinion from the earliest times in the Church. The 
main arguments for the identity of all the relations are, first, the name 
Simon, as that of the giver of the feast in one place (Luke vii. 40), and 
most probably so in the other, in which he appears as the master of the 
house where it was given (Matt. xxvi. 6) ; secondly, the seeming unlike- 
lihood that twice the Lord should have been honored in so very unusual 
a manner ; and thirdly, the strange coincidence, as it would otherwise be, 
that in each case there should have been on the part of some present a 
misinterpretation of the thing done, an offence taken. 

To these arguments, however, it may be answered that the name 
Simon was of much too frequent use among the Jews for any stress to be 
laid upon the sameness of the name. Again, that the anointing of the 
feet with odors or with ointments, though not so common as the anoint- 
ing of the head, yet was not in itself something without precedent,* the 

* Thus Curtius of the Indian monarchs (1. 8, c. 9) : Demtis soleis odoribus illi- 
nuntur pedes, and Plutarch makes mention, though on a very peculiar occasion, of 
wine and sweet-smelling essences as used for this purpose. (Becker's Charikles, 
v. 1, p. 428.) The custom of having the sandals taken off by those in attendance 
before meals, which would render the service of the woman easy and natural to bo 
done, is frequently alluded to by classic writers. Thus Terence : 

Adcurrunt servi, soccos detrahunt, 
Inde alii festinare, lectos sternere, 
Caenam apparare ; 



240 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

only remarkable coincidence here being, that Mary the sister of Lazarus, 
and the woman " which was a sinner" should have each wiped the feet 
of the Lord with the hairs of her head. (Luke vii. 38 ; John xii. 3.) 
Now if this had been any merely fantastic honor paid to the Lord, 
which to offer would scarcely have occurred to more persons than one, 
we might well wonder to find it twice, and on two independent occasions, 
repeated ; — but take it as an expression of homage, of reverence and 
love, such as would naturally rise out of the deepest and truest feelings 
of the human heart, and then its recurrence is no wise wonderful. 
And such it is ; in the hair is the glory of the woman (see 1 Cor. xi. 15), 
long beautiful tresses having evermore been held as her chiefest adorn- 
ment;* they are in the human person highest in place and in honor, — 
while on the contrary the feet are lowest in both. What then was this 
service, but the outward expression, and incorporation in an act, of the 
inward truth, that the highest and chiefest of man's honor and glory and 
beauty were lower and meaner than the lowest that pertained to the Son 
of God ; that they only found their true place when acknowledging their 
subjection and doing service to him? And what wonder that the Lord, 
who called ou^ all that was deepest and truest in the human heart, who 
awoke in it, as none else might ever do, feelings of the warmest love and 
profoundest reverence, should twice f have been the object of this honor? 
Yet was it an honor, we may observe, with some differences in the mo- 
tives which called it forth. Once, in the case of Mary the sister of Laz- 
arus, the immediately impelling cause was intense gratitude, — she had 
found the words of Christ, words of eternal life to herself, and he had 
crowned his gifts to her by giving back to her a beloved brother, whom 
she now beheld restored to life and health before her ; the pound of oint- 
ment " very costly " % which she brought, was a thank-offering from her, 
and as less of shame was mingled in her feelings, she anointed both her 

and in all the ancient bas-reliefs and pictures illustrative of the subject, we see the 
guests reclining with their feet bare. (See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. 
Coena, p. 253.) 

* So the Latin poet : Quod primum formes decus est, cecidere capilli. And of 
nearly similar uses of the hair in extreme humiliation and deprecation of the divine 
anger we have abundant examples in profane history. Thus Livy, 1. 3, c. 7 : Stra- 
tse passim matres crinibus templa verrentes veniam irarum caelestium exposcunt. Cf. 
Polybius, 1. 9, c. 6. 

f Here, as in so many other places, Strauss (Leben Jesu, v. 1, p. 782), like one 
before him. murmurs against the evangelical history, crying, " To what purpose is 
this waste 1" as though that history could not but be wrong which was thus prodi- 
gal in relating honors done to the Saviour. 

X Gregory the Great, applying the "very costly" to this history, says beauti- 
fully (Horn. 33 in Evang.) : Consideravit quid fecit, et noluit moderari quid faceret 
The whole discourse is full of beauty. 



THE TWO DEBTORS. 241 

Lord's feet and also his head. But what brought this woman with the 
alabaster box of ointment to Jesus, was the earnest yearning after the 
forgiveness of her sins, and she, in her deep shame and abasement of 
soul before him, presumed not to approach hin nearer than to anoint his 
feet only, standing the while behind him ; and kissing them with her 
lips, and wiping with the hair of her head, she realized, as it were, in an 
outward act, the bidding of St. Paul, " as ye have yielded your members 
servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity ; even so now yield 
your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." (Rom. vi. 19.) 
And to the third argument it may be answered, that though the two 
events have this in common, that there was on each occasion an offence 
taken, yet beyond this there is nothing similar. In the one case it is 
the Pharisee, the giver of the feast, that is offended — in the other some 
of the disciples, and mainly Judas ; — again, the Pharisee is offended with 
the Lord — Judas, not so much with him, as with the woman ; — the Phari- 
see, because the Lord's conduct seems inconsistent with his reputation 
for holiness — but Judas, as is well known, from a yet meaner and baser 
motive of covetousness. To all which it may be added, that there is 
nothing to make it the least probable, that the Mary of the happy family 
circle in Bethany,* to whom the Lord bears such honorable testimony, 
had ever been aforetime one to whom the title of sinner"^ as it is here 

* Se/ij/r? kcu o-irovdala, as a Greek Father entitles her. 

t " Which was a sinner," must then mean, <: which had been a sinner," that is, 
in former times, hut had long since been brought to repentance and chosen the 
better part, and returned to, and been received back into, the bosom of her family; 
even as the history must be related here altogether out of its place, for the anoint- 
ing by Mary took place immediately before the Lord's death, it was for his burial. 
(Matt. xxvi. 12.) Many do thus understand the words to refer to sins long ago 
committed, even as they had been long ago forsaken: as for instance, Grotius, who 
is partly moved thereto by the necessities of his harmony, which admits but one 
anointing, and partly, I should imagine, also by his fear of antinomian tendencies 
in the other interpretation ; for that he was in this respect somewhat afraid of the 
Gospelof the grace of God, his Commentary on the Romans gives sufficient evidence : 
even as the same fear makes another expositor affirm, that her sin, for which she was 
thus spoken of as a sinner, was not more than that she was too fond of adorning her 
person ; just as others will not allow Rahab to have been, at least in the common 
sense of the term, a ttSowi at all, but only the keeper of a lodging-house. But how 
much does that view maintained by Grotius weaken the moral effect of the whole 
scene, besides being opposed to the plain sense of the words ; — if the woman had 
long since returned to the paths of piety and holiness, it is little likely that even 
the Pharisee should have been so vehemently offended at the gracious reception 
which she found, or would have spoken of her as he does, " for she is a sinner." 
"We should rather consider this as the turning moment of her life, and it is evident 
that Augustine (Scrm. 99) so considered it, for he says of her: Accessit ad Domi- 
num immunda ut rediret munda. accessit aegra ut rediret sana. Moreover in that 
other case, the absolving words, " Thy sins are forgiven" instead of being those of 
16 



242 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

meant, could have been applied ; and, as it has been ingeniously observed, 
with the risen Lazarus sitting at the table, even this Pharisee would 
hardly have so rapidly drawn his conclusion against the divine mission 
and character of his guest. 

These arguments appear so convincing, that one is surprised to find 
how much fluctuation of opinion there has been from the very first in 
the Church, concerning the relation of these histories one to another, — 
the Greek Fathers generally distinguishing them — the Latin, for the 
most part, seeing in them but one and the same history. This last 
opinion however finally prevailed, and was long almost the universal one 
in the Church, that is, from the time of Gregory the Great, who threw 
all his weight into this scale,* until the times of the Reformation. Then, 
when the Scriptures were again subjected to a more critical examina- 
tion, the other interpretation gradually became prevalent anew, and one 
might say, had for some while been recognized almost without a dis- 
sentient voice, till again in our own days Schleiermacher has maintained, 
not I think with success, but certainly with extraordinary acuteness, that 
the anointing happened but once. But to enter further on this debate 
would be alien to the present purpose : and the passage containing the 
parable of the Two Debtors will be considered without any reference to 
the histories in the other Gospels, of which indeed I have the firmest 
conviction that it is altogether independent. 

a present forgiveness, now first passing upon her, 'can only be the repeated assur- 
ance of a forgiveness which she must long since have received ; and how strange 
-and unnatural a supposition this is, every one may judge. 

* The fact of this opinion being introduced into one of the hymns in the Liturgy 
as by him reformed, — 

Maria soror Lazari, 

Quae tot commisit crimina, — 

must have had great influence in procuring its general acceptance. Even so we 
have in the famous Dies tree, composed in the thirteenth century, 

Qui Mariam absolvisti .... 
Mihi quoque spem dedisti ; 

though here may possibly be allusion to Mary Magdalene, who indeed was often, 
though without the slightest grounds, save that the first notice of her occurs shortly 
after this incident (Luke viii. 2), identified with this woman that was a sinner; so 
that many have made but one and the same person of Mary the sister of Lazarus. 
Mary Magdalene, and this woman. Thus Gregory himself, Horn. 33 in Evang. 
The belief in the identity of the two last has indelibly impressed itself on the 
very language of Christendom ; but there is nothing to make us suppose that Mary 
Magdalene had led an eminently sinful life, before she was found in the company of 
the holy women that ministered to the Lord, unless we should interpret the seven 
devils which were cast out of her, to mean seven sins.— There is a good sketch of 
the history of the controversy concerning this matter in Deyling's Obss. Sac., v. 3, 
p,291. 



THE TWO DEBTORS. 243 

Our Lord having been invited to the house of a Pharisee, had there 
"sat down to meat." That a woman, and one of a character such as is 
here represented, should have pressed into the guest-chamber, and this 
uninvited, either by the Lord, or by the master of the house, and that 
she should have there been permitted to offer to the Saviour the form of 
homage which she did, may at first sight appear strange ; — yet after all 
does not require the supposition of something untold for its explanation, 
as that she was a relation of Simon's, or lived in the same house, — sup- 
positions which are altogether strange, not to say contradictory to the 
narrative. A little acquaintance with the manners of the East, where 
meals are so often almost public, where ranks are not separated with 
such iron barriers as with us, will make us feel with what ease such an 
occurrence might have taken place.* Or if this seems not altogether to 
explain the circumstance, one has only to remember how easily such 
obstacles as might have been raised up against her, and would have 
seemed insuperable to others, or to herself in another state of mind, 
would have been put aside, or broken through by an earnestness such as 
now possessed her : e.ven as it is the very nature of such religious ear- 
nestness to break through and despise these barriers, nor ever to pause 
and ask itself whether according to the world's judgment it be "in sea- 
son" or "out of season."! 

* The following confirmation of what ahove is written has "been since put into 
my hands : "At a dinner at the Consul's house at Damietta we were much interested 
in observing a custom of the country. In the room where we were received, besides 
the divan on which we sat, there were seats all round the walls. Many came in and 
took their places on those side-seats, uninvited and yet unchallenged. They spoke 
to those at table on business or the news of the day, and our host spoke freely to 
them. This made us understand the scene in Simon's house at Bethany, where 
Jesus sat at supper, and Mary came in and anointed his feet with ointment ; and 
also the scene in the Pharisee's house, where the woman who was a sinner came in, 
uninvited and yet not forbidden, and washed his feet with her tears. "We after- 
wards saw this custom at Jerusalem, and there it was still more fitted to illustrate 
these incidents. We were sitting round Mr. Nicolayson's table, when first one and 
then another stranger opened the door, and came in, taking their seat by the wall. 
They leant forward and spoke to those at the table." Narrative of a Mission of 
Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839. 

f Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. cxl. 4) : Ilia impudica, quondam frontosa ad forni- 
cationem, frontosior ad salutem irrupit in domum alienam ; and again (Serm. 99, 
c. 1) : Vidistis mulierem famosam . . . non invitatam irruisse convivio, ubi suus 
medic as recumbebat, et quaasisse pia impudentia sanitatem : irruens quasi impor- 
tuna convivio, opportuna beneficio : and Gregory the Great {Horn. 33 in Evang.) . 
Quia turpitudinis suae maculas aspexit, lavanda ad fontem misericordiae cucurrit, 
convivantes non erubuit ; Nam quia semetipsam graviter erubescebat intus, nihil 
esse credidit, quod verecundaretur foris ; and another (Bernardi Opp., v. 2. p. 
601) : Gratias tibi, 6 beatissima peccatrix ; ostendisti mundo tutum satis peccato- 
ribus locum, pedes scilicet Jesu, qui neminem spernunt, neminem rejiciunt, nemi- 



244 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

In the thoughts which passed through the heart of the Pharisee,-— 
displeased at seeing that the Lord did not repel the woman, but gra 
ciously accepted her homage, — the true spirit of a Pharisee betrays 
itself — of one who could not raise his thoughts beyond a ceremonial 
pollution, nor understand of holiness, as standing in any thing save the 
purifying of the flesh,* who would have said to that woman, had she 
dared to approach unto him, u Stand by thyself, for I am holier than 
thou !"f In the conclusion to which, in his inward heart, he arrived, 
" This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what 
manner of woman this is ;" we trace the belief, so evidently current 
among the Jews, that discerning of spirits was one of the marks of a 
true prophet, and, in an especial degree, of the great prophet of all, the 
Messiah, — a belief founded on Isaiah xi. 3, 4. (See 1 Kin. xiv. 6 ; 2 
Kin. i. 3 ; v. 26.) Thus Nathanael first exclaims in wonder to the Lord 
who has truly read his character, " Whence knowest thou me ?" and 
then presently breaks out into that un doubting confession of faith, 
" Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel ;" and so the 
Samaritan woman, " Come and see a man who told me all things which 
ever I did : is not this the Christ ?" (John iv. 29) ; and on account of 
this belief it is, that the Evangelists are so often careful to record that 
Jesus knew the thoughts of his hearers, or as St. John (ii. 25) expressly 
states it, "needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew 
what was in man."J So that, in fact, the Pharisee mentally put the 
Lord into this dilemma, — either he does not know the true character of 
this woman, in which case he lacks that discernment of spirits which 
pertains to every true prophet ; or if he knows it, and yet endures her 

nem repellunt : suscipiunt omnes, onmes admittunt. Ibi certe iEthiopissa mutat 
pellem suam ; ibi pardus mutat varietatem suam ; ubi solus Pharisseus nou exspu- 
mat superbiam suam. 

* Augustine : Habebat sanctitatem in corpore non in corde, at quia non habebat 
earn in corde, utique falsem habebat in corpore. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. c. 5 ; cxxv. 2 ; 
and Gregory the Great {Horn. 34 in Evang.) : Yera justitia compassionem habet, 
falsa justitia dedignationem. — As a specimen of similar notions of holiness current 
among the Jews, a commentator on Prov. v. 8, puts this very question : Quanto 
spatio a meretrice recedendum est 7 R. Chasda respondet: Ad quatuor cubitos. 
(Schoettgen, Hor. Heb., v. 1, p. 348.) And again, p. 303, various Rabbis are 
extolled for the precautions which they took to keep lepers at a distance from 
them ; for example, by flinging stones at them if they approached too near. 

t Bernard, in a beantiful passage {De Dedic. Ecc, Serm, 4), styles him : Phari- 
soeam ilium murmurantem adversus medicum, qui salutem operabatur, et succcn- 
Bentem languidae, quae salvabatur. 

$ Vitringa (Obss. Sac, v. 1, p. 479) has an interesting and instructive essay (De 
Signis a Mcssia edcndis) on the expectations of the Jews concerning the miracles 
which the Messiah was to perform, and by which he was to legitimate his pre- 
tensions. 



THE TWO DEBTORS. 245 

touch and is willing to accept a service at such hands, he is lacking in 
that holiness which is also the mark of a prophet of God ; such therefore 
in either case he cannot be. Probably as these thoughts were passing 
through his mind he already began to repent of the needless honor he 
had shown to one, whose pretensions to a peculiar mission from God he 
had thus quickly concluded were unfounded. But the Lord showed him 
that he was indeed a discerner of the thoughts of hearts, by reading at 
once what was passing in his heart, and laying his finger without more 
ado on the tainted spot which was there. " Simon" he said, " I have 
somewhat to say tcnto thee.'''' The other could' not refuse to hear, nor has 
he yet so entirely renounced his faith in some higher character as be- 
longing to his guest, but that he still addresses him with an appellation 
of respect, " Master, say on." 

With this introduction, — with this leave to speak asked and received, 
— the parable is uttered. " T/iere was a certain creditor which had tivo 
debtors : tlw one oivedfive hundred p>ence and tJie other fifty. And ivhen 
they had 'nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both." In the words 
themselves there is no difficulty, though in the application of them to 
the case which they were spoken to illustrate, there are one or two of 
considerable importance. God, it needs not to say, is the creditor, men 
the debtors, and sins the debts. Of the sums named as the amount of 
the debts, fifty and five hundred pence, it may be remarked that they 
vary indeed, but nothing like in the same proportion as the two debts 
vary in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant. (Matt, xviii.) There 
the difference is between ten thousand talents and one hundred pence, 
an enormous difference, even as the difference is enormous between the 
sms which a man commits against God, and those which his fellow-man 
may commit against him ; but here the difference is not at all so great, 
the sums vary but in the proportion of ten to one, for there is no such 
incalculable difference between the sins which one man and another 
commits against God. Our Lord proceeds : " Tell me. therefore, which of 
them, will love him most? Simon answered, I suppose that lie, to whom 
he forgave most." The difficulties meet us when we come to the appli- 
cation of these words : for while that which Simon says is true in the 
order of things natural, can the consequences which would seem there- 
upon to be induced as relates to the spiritual world be true also 1 Are 
we to conclude from hence, as at first sight might seem, that there is any 
advantage in having multiplied transgressions ? — that the wider a man 
has wandered from God, the nearer, if he be brought back at all, he will 
cleave to him afterward 1 — the more sin, the more love 1 Would it not 
then follow, " Let us do evil that good may come," — let us sin much 
now, that we may love much hereafter, — that we may avoid that luke- 
waramess of affections which will be the condition of those that have 



246 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

sinned but little ? And would it not then seem, that for a man to have 
been kept out of gross offences in the time before he was awakened to a 
deeper religious earnestness, — or, better still, for a man to have grown 
out of his baptismal root, — instead of being a blessing, and a mercy, and 
a matter of everlasting thanksgiving, would prove a hindrance, oppos- 
ing, in his case, an effectual barrier to any very near and very high 
communion of love with his Saviour ? And to understand the passage 
thus, would it not be to affirm a moral contradiction, — to affirm in fact 
this, that the more a man has emptied himself of love, — the more he has 
laid waste all nobler affecfions and powers, — the deeper his heart has 
sunk in selfishness and sensuality (for sin is all this), the more capable 
he will be of the highest and purest love ? 

But the whole matter is clear, if we consider the debt, not as an ob- 
jective, but a subjective, debt, — not as so many outward transgressions 
and outbreaks of evil, but as so much conscience of sin : and this we 
well know is in no wise in proportion to the amount and extent of evil 
actually committed and brought under the cognizance of other men. 
Often they who have least of what the world can call sin, or rather 
crime (for the world knows nothing of sin), have yet the deepest sense 
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin — are most conscious of it as a root of 
bitterness in themselves — are the most forward to exclaim, " Woe is me, 
I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips ;" and therefore, as 
they have most groaned under the evil, are the most thankful for the 
fact of a redemption, for the gift of a Redeemer. But he who has little 
forgiven is not necessarily he who has sinned little, but he who is lack- 
ing in any strong conviction of the exceeding evil of sin, who has little 
feeling of his own share in the universal taint and corruption that 
cleaves to all the descendants of Adam, who has never learned to take 
home his sin to himself; who, therefore, while he may have no great 
objection to God's plan of salvation, may have a cold respect, as this 
Pharisee had, for Christ, yet esteems that he could have done as well, 
or nearly as well, without him. He loves little, or scarcely at all, be- 
cause he has little sense of a deliverance wrought for him ; because he 
never knew what it was to lie under the curse of a broken law, having 
the sentence of death in himself, and then by that merciful Saviour to be 
set free, and bidden to live, and brought into the glorious liberty of the 
children of God.* 

* Augustine (Serm. 99, c. 4) freely acknowledges the stress of this difficulty: 
Dicit cnim aliqnis, Si cui modicum dimittitur, modicum diligit ; cui autem plus 
dimittitur, plus diligit, expedit plus diligere quam minus diligere : oportet ut 

multum peccemus ut dimissorem magnorum debitorum amplius diligamus ; 

and again : Si inyenero plus diligere eum, cui plura peccata dimissa sunt, utilius 
multa peccavit, utilior erat multa iniquitas, ne esset tepida caritas. And he solves 



THE TWO DEBTORS. 24? 

Simon himself was an example of one who thus loved. little, who 
having little sense of sin, felt little his need of a Redeemer, and there- 
fore loved that Redeemer but little : and he had betrayed this his lack 
of love in small yet significant matters. Accounting, probably, the in- 
vitation itself as sufficient honor done to his guest, he had withheld 
from him the ordinary courtesies almost universal in the East — had 
neither given him water for the feet (Gen. xviii. 4; Judg. xix. 21), 
nor offered him the kiss of peace (Gen. xxii. 4; Exod. xviii. 7), nor 
anointed his head with oil, as was ever the custom at festivals. (Ps. 
xxiii. 5; cxli- 5 ; Matt. vi. 17.) But while he had fallen so short of the 
customary courtesies, that woman had far exceeded them. He had not 
poured water on the Saviour's feet, — she had washed them, not with 
water but with her tears — the blood of her heart,* as Augustine calls 
them, — and then wiped them with the hairs of her head ; — he had not 
given the single kiss of salutation on the cheek, she had multiplied 
kisses, and those upon the feet ; he had not anointed the head of Jesus 
with ordinary oil, — but she with precious ointment had anointed even 
his feet. 

li W7ierefore I say unto t/iee, Her sins ivhich are many, are forgiven; 
for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little." 
There is an embarrassment, by all acknowledged, on the face of these 
words ; first, how to bring them into agreement with the parable, for in 
that the debtor is said to love much, because forgiven much, and not to 
be forgiven much, because he loved much: and again how to bring 
them into agreement with the general doctrine of Scripture, which ever 
teaches that we love God because he first loved us, — that faith is the 
previous condition of forgiveness, and not love, which is not a condition 
at all, but a consequence. Some have felt these difficulties so strongly, 
that in their terror lest the Romanists should draw any advantage for 
their fides formata from the passage, — which indeed they are willing 
enough to do, — they have affirmed that the word designating the cause 
really stands for that designating the consequence, — that " her sins are 
forgiven, for she loved much" means, " her sins are forgiven, tlierefore 
she loved muchP\ But in the first place, it was not true that she yet 
knew her sins to be forgiven, — the absolving words are only spoken 
in the next verse ; and moreover, this way of escape from a doctrinal 

it as is done above : O Pharisaee, ideo, parum diligis, quia parum tibi dimitti sus- 
picaris : non quia parum dimittitur, sed quia parum putas esse, quod dimittitur. 
Compare a beautiful sermon by Schleiermacher. (Predigten, v. 1, p. 524.) 

* Fudit lacrymas, sanguinem cordis. 

t They say on is here for Slo, and appeal to John viii. 44 and 1 John iii. 14 ; but 
neither passage, rightly interpreted, yields the least support to the view that th© 
words could ever be interchangeably used. (See "Winer's Grammatik, p. 426.) 



248 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

embarrassment, by some violence done to the plain words of the text 
will at once be rejected by all, who justly believe that in the interpre- 
tation of Scripture, grammar and the laws of human speech should first 
be respected, and that the doctrine can and will take care of itself — . 
will never in the end be found in any contradiction with itself, — that 
the faith of the Church will ever come triumphantly forth out of every 
part of the word of God. And as far as regards advantage which the 
Romish controversialists would fain draw from the passage, such, what- 
ever may be the explanation, there can really be none. The parable 
stands in the heart of the narrative, an insuperable barrier against such ; 
he who owed the large debt is not forgiven it as freely as the other is 
his smaller debt, because of the greater love which he before felt to- 
wards the creditor ;* but, on the contrary, the sense of a larger debt 
remitted, makes him afterwards love his creditor more. And besides, 
were it meant that her sins were forgiven, because, — in their sense who 
would make charity justify and not faith,! — she loved much, the other 
clause in the sentence would necessarily be, " But he who loveth little, 
to the same little is forgiven." 

But the words, "for she loved muck" may best be explained by con- 
sidering what the strong sorrow for sin, and the earnest desire after for- 

* Incredible as it will appear, this is actually the interpretation of the parable 
given by Maldonatus (adloc): (i -Which of them will love him most?" is only, he 
affirms, a popular way of saying, " Which of them did love him most 1 ?" — which of 
them may you conclude from the effect to have had most affection for him, and 
therefore, to have been dearest to him, he in whose behalf he was willing to remit a 
large debt, or he in whose behalf he only remitted a small 1— He asserts the same 
to have been the interpretation of the parable given by Euthemius, and also by 
Augustine ; in the case of the last this is certainly untrue. 

•j- Let me quote, were it only with the hope of bringing it before one reader who 
was hitherto ignorant of it, the following passage on the attempt thus to substitute 
charity for faith in the justification of man. " To many, to myself formerly, it has 
appeared a mere dispute about words : but it is by no means of so harmless a 
character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the 
conscience from the ruined and corrupted state in which we are without Christ. 
Sin is the disease. What is the remedy 1— Charity ?— Pshaw ! Charity in the 
lar^e apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use 
of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,— faith of grace,— faith in the God- 
manhood, the cross, the mediation, the perfected righteousness of Jesus, to the utter 
rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the 
restorative. The Eomish scheme is preposterous ; — it puts the rill before the 
spring. Faith is the source, — charity, that is the whole Christian life, is the 
stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without 
charity ; as wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was 
imperfect without heat ; or that the sun, however cloudless, is imperfect without 
beams. The true answer would be :— It is not faith,— but utter reprobate faith- 
jessness." (Coleridge, Literary Remains, v. 2, 3G8.) 



THE TWO DEBTORS. 249 

giveness, such as this woman displayed, mean, and from whence they 
arise j — surely from this, from the deep feeling in the sinner's heart, that 
by his sins he has separated himself from that God who is Love, while 
yet he cannot do without his love, — from the feeling that the heart must 
be again permitted to love him, must be again assured of his love toward 
it, else it will utterly wither and die. Sin unforgiven is felt to be the 
great barrier to this ; and the desire after forgiveness, — if it be not a 
mere selfish desire after personal safety, in which case it can be nothing 
before God. — is the desire for the removal of this barrier, that so the 
heart may be free to love and to know itself beloved again. This desire 
then is itself love at its negative pole, not as yet made positive, for the 
work of grace, the absolving word of God can alone make it so ; it is 
the flower of love desiring to bud and bloom, but not daring and not able 
to put itself forth in the chilling atmosphere of the anger of God, — but 
which will do so at once when to the stern winter of God's anger, the 
genial spring of his love succeeds. In this sense that woman ' ; loved 
much;" all her conduct proved the intense yearning of her heart after a 
reconciliation with a God of love, from whom she had alienated herself 
by her sins : all her tears and her services witnessed how much she de- 
sired to be permitted to love him and to know herself beloved of him, 
and on account of this her love, which, in fact, was faith* (see ver. 50, 
'• Thy faith hath saved thee"), she obtained forgiveness of her sins. This 
sense of the miserable emptiness of the creature. — this acknowledgment 
that a life apart from God is not life but death, with the conviction that 
in God there is fulness of grace and blessing, and that he is willing to 
impart of this fulness to all who bring the empty vessel of the heart to 
be filled by him ; this, call it faith, or initiatory love, is what alone makes 
man receptive of any divine gift, — this is what that Pharisee, in his legal 
righteousness, in his self-sufficiency and pride, f had scarcely at all, and 

* Very distinctly Theophylact (in loc.) "Oti yyaTr-qo-e ttoAu, avrl rod, it'kttiv 
eVe5ej£aTo ttoWw. and presently before he calls all which she had been doing for 
her Saviour, Trlarecos <xv^oKa kclL ayaTrrjs. For further testimonies in favor of this 
exposition, see Gerhard's Loc. Tkeoll., loc. 16, c. 8, <j 1. 

f In the Bustan of the famous Persian poet Saadi (see Tholcck's Blutfien- 
samml. aus d. Morgenl. Mustik, p. 261) there is a story which seems an echo of 
this evangelical history. Jesus, while on earth, was once entertained in the cell of 
a dervish or a monk, of eminent reputation of sanctity ; in the same city dwelt a 
youth sunk in every sin. "whose heart was so black that Satan himself shrunk 
back from it in horror." This last presently appeared before the cell of the monk, 
and, as smitten by the very presence of the Divine prophet, began to lament deeply 
the sin and misery of his life past, and shedding abundant tears, to implore pardmi 
and grace. The monk indignantly interrupted him, demanding how he dared to 
appear in his presence and in that of God's holy prophet ; assured him that for 
him it was in vain to seek forgiveness; and in proof how inexorably he considered 



250 THE TWO DEBTORS. 

therefore lie derived little or no good from communion with Christ. 
But that woman had it in large measure, and therefore she bore away 
the largest and best blessing which the Son of G-od had to bestow, even 
the forgiveness of her sins ; to her those blessed words were spoken, 
" Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace ;" and in her it was proved true 
that " where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." 

his lot was fixed for hell, exclaimed, "My God, grant me but one thing, that I may 
stand far from this man on the judgment-day." On this Jesus spoke, " It shall bo 
even so : the prayer of both is granted. This sinner has sought mercy and grace, 
and has not sought them in vain, — his sins are forgiven, — his place shall be in 
Paradise-at the last day. But this monk has prayed that he may never stand near 
this sinner, — his prayer too is granted, — hell shall be his place, for there this sinner 
shall never come. 



XVII. 
THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

Luke x. 30-37. 

We need not suppose that the lawyer, who " stood up" and proposed to 
our Lord the question out of which this parable presently grew, had any 
malicious intention therein, least of all that deep malignity which moved 
questions like those recorded at John viii. 6; Matt. xxii. 16; which 
were, in fact, nothing less than snares for his life ; nor need we attrib- 
ute to this lawyer even that desire to perplex and silence, out of which 
other questions had their rise. (Matt. xxii. 23.) For in the first place, 
the question itself, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" was not an 
ensnaring one ; it was not one like that concerning the tribute-money, 
which it was hoped would put the answerer, however he replied, in a 
false position ; and further, we may conclude from the earnestness of 
the Lord's reply, that the spirit out of which the question was proposed, 
had not been altogether light or mocking; since it was not his manner to 
answer so the mere cavillers or despi^ers. The only ground for attribut- 
ing an evil intention to this scribe, or lawyer, — for Matt. xxii. 35, com- 
pared with Mark xii. 28, show that scribe and lawyer are the same, — is 
that he is said to have put the question to Christ " tempting him." But 
to tempt, in its proper signification, means nothing more than to make 
trial of, and whether the tempting be good or evil, is determined by the 
motive out of which it springs. Thus God tempts man. when he puts 
him to proof, that he may show him what is in himself, — that he may 
show him sins, which else might have remained concealed even from 
himself (Jam. i. 12) ; he tempts man to bring out his good, and to 
strengthen it (Gen. xxii. 1 ; Heb. xi. 17) ; or if to bring his evil out, it 
is that the man may himself also become aware of some evil which be- 
fore was concealed from him, and watch and pray against it ; — it is to 



252 THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

humble him and to do him good in his latter end ;* only Satan tempts 
man purely to irritate and bring out and multiply his evil. The purpose 
of this lawyer in tempting Jesus, as it was not on the one side that high 
and holy one, so as little seems it this deeply malignant on the other. 
The Evangelist probably meant nothing more than that he desired to put 
the Lord to the trial. Comparing Matt. xxii. 35 with Mark xii. 28-34, 
both records of the same conversation, we shall see that in the first the 
questioner is said to have proposed his question, as in the present case, 
tempting the Lord ; while in the second Evangelist, the Lord bears wit- 
ness concerning the very questioner, u Thou art not far from the kingdom 
of God ;" even as he was evidently a seeker and lover of truth. We can- 
not, indeed, suppose that the question, on the present occasion, arose 
purely from love of the truth, and a desire to be further instructed in it; 
but the lawyer probably would fain make proof of the skill of this fa- 
mous Galilaean teacher, he would measure his depths, and with this pur- 
pose he brought forward the question of questions, " "What shall I do to 
inherit eternal life ?" 

Our Lord's reply is as much as to say, — The question you ask is 
already answered ; what need to make further inquiries, when the answer 
is contained in the words of that very law, of which you profess to be a 
searcher and expounder ? What is written there concerning this great 
question ? " How readest thou ? " That the lawyer should at once lay 
his finger on the great commandment which Christ himself quoted as 
such on that other occasion just referred to, showed no little spiritual 
insight, — proved that he was superior to the common range of his coun- 
trymen : he quotes rightly Deut. vi. 5, in connection with Lev. xix. 1 8, 
as containing the essence of the law. Thereupon our Lord bears him 
testimony that he has answered well, — that his words were right words, 
however he might be ignorant of their full import, — of all which they 
involved : " Thou hast answered right ; this do : and thou shalt live ;" put 
this which thou knowest into effect, — let it pass from dead uninfluential 
knowledge into living practice, and it will be well. Now at length the 
lawyer's conscience is touched : these last words have found him out ; 
however he may have owned in theory the law of love, he has not been 

* Tleipd^iv = ireipav Aa/ifiaveii/. Augustine very frequently describes the manner 
in which it can he said that God tempts, and the purposes which he has in tempt- 
ing; thus (Enarr. in Ps. lv. 1) : Omnis tentatio prohatio est, et omnis piobationis 
effectus habet fructum suum. Quia homo plerumque etiam sibi ipsi ignotus est: 
quid ferat, quidve non ferat ignorat, et aliquando prsesumit se ferre quod non 
potest, et aliquando desperat se posse ferre quod potest. Accedit tentatio quasi 
interrogatio, et invenitur homo a seipso, quia latebat et seipsum, sed artificem non 
latebat. Thus God tempts, as SoKinao-r^s ruiv Kapdtuu, Satan, on the contrary, is 
The temper (6 ireipdfav = 6 ireipavr-iis.') Cf. Tkrtullian, De Oratiojie, c. 8. 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN". 253 

living in obedience to it. Still he would fain justify himself; if he has 
not been large and free in the exercise of love towards his fellow me^ 
it is because few have claims upon him : — " True, I am to love my 
neighbor as myself, but who is my neighbor?"* The very question, 
like Peter's, " How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive 
him?" was not merely a question which might receive a wrong answer, 
but itself a wrong question, involving a wrong condition of mind, out of 
which alone it could have proceeded. He who asked, " Whom shall I 
love ?" proved that he understood not what that love meant of which he 
spoke, for he wished to have laid down beforehand how much he was to 
do, and where he should be at liberty to stop, — who had a claim and 
who not upon his love ; thus proving that he knew nothing of that love, 
whose essence is, that it has no limit, except in its own inability to pro- 
ceed further, — that it receives a law only from itself, — that it is a debt 
which we must be well content to be ever paying, and not the less still 
to owe. (Rom. xiii. 8.) Especially wonderful is the reply which our 
blessed Saviour makes to him, wonderful, that is, in its adaptation to the 
needs of him to whom it was addressed, leading him, as it does, to take 
off his eye from the object to which love is to be shown, and to turn it 
back and inward upon him who is to show the love ; for this is the key 
to the following parable, and with this aim it was spoken. 

w A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho P He says, 
"ive?it down" or, "was going down," not merely because Jerusalem 
stood considerably higher than Jericho, — for the phrase would have its 
fitness in this view, — but because the going to Jerusalem, as to the me- 
tropolis, was always spoken of as going up. (See Acts xviii. 22.) The 
distance between the two cities was about a hundred and fifty stadia, — 
the road lying through a desolate and rocky region — " the wilderness 
that goeth up from Jericho" (Josh. xvi. 1), though the plain of Jericho 
itself, the second city in Judaea, was one of extraordinary fertility and 
beauty, well watered, and abounding in palms (" the city of palm-trees," 
Judg. i. 16), in roses, in balsam, in honey, and in all the choicest produc- 



* Tholuck (Auslegung der Bergpredigt, Matt. v. 43), has an instructive inquiry 
on the interpretation which the Jews gave to the term " neighbor," in the law. It 
is striking to see the question of the narrow-hearted scribe, " Who is my neighbor?" 
reappearing in one who would think that they two had little in common. I make 
this extract from Emerson's Essays (Ess. 2) : -'Do not tell me, as a good man did 
to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my 
poor 1 I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, 
the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong. 
There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and 
sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popula: 
charities " &c. 



254 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

tions of Palestine.* St. Jerome mentions that a particular part of tha 
road leading from one of these cities to the other, was called the red or 
the bloody way,f so much blood had there been shed by robbers ; and 
that in his own time, there was at one point in this wilderness a fort with 
a Roman garrison, for the protection of travellers ; so that the incident 
of the poor traveller falling in that very journey among robbers seems 
taken from the life. Those among whom he fell did their best to main- 
tain the infamous character of the spot, for they " stripped him of his rai- 
ment" and, because, perhaps, he made some slight resistance as they were 
spoiling him, or out of mere wantonness of cruelty, u wounded him, and 
departed, leaving him half dead." 

As he lay bleeding in the road, " by chance tliere came doion a certain 
priest that iva$" The original would justify us in saying rather " by 
coincidence "J than '■'-'by chance;" by that wonderful falling in of one 
event with another, which often indeed seems to men but chance, yet is 
indeed of the fine weaving in, by God's providence, of the threads of dif- 
ferent men's lives into one common woof. He brings the negative pole 
of one man's need into contact with the positive of another man's power 
of h»lp — one man's emptiness into relation with another's fulness. Many 
of our summonses to acts of love are of this kind, and they are those per- 
haps which we are most in danger of missing, through a failing to see 
in them this finger of God. He at least who went down ,that way missed 
his opportunity. There would be a fine irony in the supposition that 
he was one who was journeying from Jericho, which was a great station 
of the priests, to Jerusalem, there to execute his office before God, " in 
the order of his course," or who, having accomplished his turn of service, 
was returning to his home. But whether this was so or not, at all events, 
he was one who had never learned what that meant, " I will have mercy, 
and not sacrifice ;" rather one who, whatever duties he might have been 
careful in fulfilling, had " omitted the weightier matters of the law, judg- 
ment, mercy, and faith ;" — for " ivlien lie saiv him, he passed by on tJw 
other side."^ So likewise did a Levite, though in his cruelty there was 

* Cotorici Itiner., quoted by "Winer (Real Worterbuch, s. v. Jerico) : Est in 
planitie sita perampla, iuontibus in theatri formam circumdata, amcenissima qui- 
dom et pinguissinia, sed inculta hodie, floribus tamen et herbis cdoriferis abun- 
dantissima. 

•f Onornast., s. v Adommim. There is a particularly impressive description of 
this dreary route in Lamartine's Travels in tlie Holy Land. Indeed no travellers 
seem to have gone this journey without being deeply impressed with the wildness 
and desolation of the road. 

% Kara ffvynvpiav. 'ZvyKvpla, or more commonly trvyKvp-qcris, from cvv and 
Kvpcw = rvyxdvu, the falling in one event with another, exactly our English coin- 
cidence. 

§ If the wounded man was a Jew, and it is very unnatural to assume him to 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 255 

an additional aggravation ; for he, it might be out of curiosity, drew near 
and looked at the miserable condition of the wounded man, claiming, as 
it did, instant help ; for the life that remained was fast ebbing through 
his open gashes, and yet after all could endure to pass forward without 
affording him the slightest assistance. Thus did they, who made their 
boast in, and were the express interpreters of, that law, which was so 
careful in pressing the duties of humanity, that twice it had said, 
" Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass, or his ox, fall down by the way, 
and hide thyself from them ; thou shalt surely help him to lift them up 
again." (Deut. xxii. 4 ; Exod. xxiii. 5.) Here not a brother's ox or his 
ass, but a brother himself, was lying in his blood, and they hid them- 
selves from him. (Isai. lviii. 7.) 

" But a certain Samaritan, as lie journeyed, came where he was." 
He might have found the same excuses for hurrying on as those who had 
gone before him had done, for no doubt they did make excuses to them- 
selves, — they did, in some way or other, justify their neglect to their own 
consciences ; as perhaps they said that there was danger where one out- 
rage had happened, of another happening, — that the robbers, probably, 
were not far distant, and might return at any moment, — or that the suf- 
ferer was beyond the help of man, — or that he who was found near him 
might himself be accused of having been his murderer. The Samaritan 
was exposed to at least the same danger in all these respects, as those 
that had passed before him, but he took not counsel of these selfish fears, 
for when he saw the wounded and bleeding man, " lie had compassion on 
him}''* While the priest and Levite, — marked out as those who should 
have been foremost in showing pity and exercising mercy, — were forget- 
ful of the commonest duties of humanity, it was left to the excommuni- 
cated Samaritan, whose very name was a by-word of contempt among 
the Jews, and synonymous with heretic (John viii. 48), to show what love 
was ; and this, not as .was required of them, to a fellow-countryman, but 
to one of an alien f and hostile race, — one of a people that had no deal- 
have been any other, his countrymen (the priest and the Levite) were in this very- 
far indeed from deserving even that limited praise which Tacitus gives them; 
Apud ipsos misericordia in promptu. 

* This compassion, as the best thing he gave, is mentioned first, for Gregory 
the Great says with great beauty {Moral, 1. 20, c. 36) : Exteriora etenim largiens, 
rem extra semetipsum preebuit. Qui autem fletum et compassionem proximo 
tribuit, ei aliquid etiam de semetipso dedit. 

t Our Lord calls the Samaritan a stranger (aWoyev^s, Luke xvil 18), one of a 
different stock. It is very curious how the notion of the Samaritans, as being a 
mingled people, composed of two elements, one heathen one Israelitish, should of 
late universally have found way not merely into popular but into learned books ; so 
that they are often spoken of as, in a great measure, the later representatives of tho 
ten tribes. Christian antiquity knew nothing of this view of their origin, but saw 



256 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

ings with his people, — that anathematized them ; — even as, no doubt, all 
the influences with which he had been surrounded from his youth, would 
have led him, as far as he yielded to them, to repay hate with hate, and 
insult with insult, and wrong with wrong. For if the Jew called the 
Samaritan a Cuthite, — an idolater who worshipped the image of a dove, — 
and cursed him publicly in his synagogue, — and prayed that he might 

in them a people of unmingled heathen blood (see testimonies in Suicer's Thes. s. 
v. So^apeiTTjy, to which may be added Theophylact on Luke xvii. 15, 'Aacrvpioi yap 
ol ^.a/j-apelrat) ; and the Scripture itself affords no countenance whatever for this 
view, but much that makes against it. In 2 Kin. xvii., where the deportation of 
the Israelites is related, there is not a word to make us suppose that any were left, 
or that there was any blending of the Cuthites and other Assyrian colonists that 
were brought in, with a remnant of the original inhabitants, whom they found still 
in the land. It is true that when Judah was carried away captive, many of the 
people were left still in the land : but we can easily explain why they should have 
been thus differently dealt with ; their sins comparatively were smaller, and the 
Lord moreover had a purpose of bringing back the captivity of Judah. Winer 
{Real Worterbuch. s. v. Samaritaner) says that it is very unlikely that some out of 
the ten tribes were not left behind in the same manner. But 2 Kin. xxi. 13, seems 
to give the strongest testimony that there were none whatever. For there the Lord 
threatening Judah says, " I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the 
plummet of the house ofAhab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, and 
turneth it upside down." This, which was only a threat against Judah, in part 
averted by repentance, had actually been executed against Samaria. (See Jer. vii. 
15.) That such an entire clearance of a conquered territory was not unusual, we 
may see from Herod. 3. 140 : 6. 31. For an account of the process by which it 
was sometimes effected, and which the Persians may well have learnt from their 
Babylonian and Assyrian forerunners in empire, see p. 117, note. The historian 
describes a Greek island which had undergone the process, as being delivered to a 
new lord, epvfj.ov iovaau audpuj/. If the Samaritans had owned any Jewish blood in 
their veins, they would certainly have brought this forward, as mightily strength- 
ening their claim to be allowed to take part with Zerubbabel and Ezra, and the 
returned Jewish exiles, in the rebuilding of the temple; but they only say, "We 
seek our God as ye do, and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon, 
king of Assur, which brought us up hither." (Ezra iv. 2.) When our Lord, at 
the first sending out of his apostles, said, " Into any city of the Samaritans enter 
ye not" (Matt. x. 5), he was not, as some tell us, yielding to popular prejudice, but 
gave the prohibition because, till the Gospel had been first offered to the Jews, "to 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel," they had no more claim to it than any other 
Gentiles, being as much aWoyevels (Josephus call them aWoe&pels), as any other 
heathen. What is singular is, that the mistake is altogether of recent origin ; the 
expositors of two hundred years ago are quite clear of it. Hammond speaks of the 
Samaritan in our parable, as " being of an Assyrian extraction ;" and Maldonatus ; 
Samaritani originc Chaldosi erant; and Keland, De Samaritanis; and many more. 
For the opinion of Makrizi, the very accurate and learned Arabian geographer, 
concerning the origin of the Samaritans, an opinion altogether agreeing with that 
here stated, see S. de Sacy's Chrest, Arabe, v. 2, p. 177. And Kobinson, in his 
Biblical Researches, speaking of the Samaritans, says, " The physiognomy of those 
we saw was not Jewish." 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 257 

have no portion in the resurrection of life, — and proclaimed that his tes- 
timony was worth nothing and might not be received, — that he who 
entertained a Samaritan in his house, was laying up judgments for his 
children, — that to eat a morsel of his fare was as eating swine's flesh — 
and in general would rather suffer any need than be beholden to him for 
the smallest office of charity ; the Samaritan was not behindhand in 
cursing, nor yet in active demonstrations of enmity and ill will. We are 
not without evidences of this in the Gospels (John iv. 9 ; Luke ix. 53), 
and from other sources more examples of their spite may be gathered. 
While, for instance, the Jews were in the habit of communicating the 
exact time of the new moon to those at a distance from Jerusalem, by fires 
kindled on the highest mountain tops, they would give the signal on the 
day preceding the right one, so to perplex and mislead.* And Josephus 
mentions that they sometimes proceeded much further than merely to 
refuse hospitality to the Jews who were going up to the feasts at Jeru- 
salem, — that they fell upon and murdered many of them — and once,, 
which must have been to them most horrible of all, a Samaritan entering 
Jerusalem secretly, polluted the whole temple, by scattering in it human 
bones, f 

But the heart of this Samaritan was not hardened, though so many 
influences must have been at work to harden and to steel it against the 
needs and distresses of a Jew. Exceedingly touching is here the minute- 
ness with which all the details of his tender care toward the poor and 
unknown stranger, of whom all he knew was, that he belonged to a na- 
tion bitterly hostile to his own, are given. He " bound up his wounds" 
no doubt with stripes torn from his own garments, having first poured 
in wine to cleanse them, and then oil to assuage their smart, and to bring 
gently the sides of them together, these two being costly but well known 
and highly esteemed remedies throughout the East.J All this must 
havj consumed no little time, and this too while' there was every motive 
to hasten onward. But after thus he had ministered to the wounded 
man's most urgent needs, and revived in him the dying spark of life, he 
u set Jam on Ids own beast, and brought him to an inn" and there again 
renewed his care and attention. Nor even so did he account that he 
had done all, but before he departed on the morrow, with the considerate 

* This fact is mentioned by Makrizi (see S. de Sacy's Chrest. Arabe, v. 2, p 
159), who affirms that it was this which put the Jews on making accurate calcula- 
tions to determine the moment of the new moon's appearance. Cf. Schoettgen'b 
Hor. Hcb., v. 1, p. 344 

f Josephus, Antt., 13. 2. 2. 

% See Isai. i. 6. Pliny, H. N., 1. 31, c. 47. Both Greek and Latin physicians 
commended vinegar and oil, or wine and oil. to be used in cases of bruises and 
wounds. 

17 



258 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

foresight of love, lie provided for the further wants of the sufferer — " hs 
took out tivo pence and gave them to the Iwst, and said unto him, Take 
care of him, and ivhatsoever thou spendest more, wJwn I come again, I* 
ivill repay thee" 

Beautiful as is this parable when thus taken simply according to the 
letter, and full of incentives to active mercy and love, bidding us to 
"put on bowels of mercies," to be kind and tender-hearted, yet how 
much lovelier still, provoking how much more strongly still to love and 
good works, when, with most of the Fathers of the Church, with many 
too of the Reformers, we trace in it a deeper meaning still, and see the 
work of Christ, of the merciful Son of man himself, portrayed to us 
here. It has been objected to this interpretation, that it makes the pa 
rable to be nothing to the matter immediately in hand. But this is a 
•mistake ; for what is that matter ? To magnify the law of love, to show 
who fulfils it, and who not. Inasmuch then as Christ himself, he who 
accounted himself every man's brother, in its largest extent fulfilled it, 
showed how we ought to love and whom ; and inasmuch as it is his ex- 
ample, or rather faith in his love towards us, which is alone really effec- 
tual in causing us to " love one another with a pure heart fervently," 
he might well propose himself and his act in succoring the perishing 
humanity, as the everlasting pattern of self-denying and self-forgetting 
love, and bring it out in strongest contrast with the selfish carelessness 
and neglect of the present leaders of the theocracy. They had not 
strengthened the diseased, nor healed the sick, nor bound up the broken, 
nor sought that which was driven away (see Ezek. xxxiv. 4), while he 
had bound up the broken-hearted (Isai. lxi. 1), and poured the balm of 
sweetest consolation into all wounded spirits. Moreover, even the ad- 
versaries of this interpretation must themselves acknowledge the facility 
with which all the circumstances of the parable yield themselves to it ; 
and it certainly affords a strong presumption that a key we have in our 
hand is the right one, when it thus turns in the lock without forcing, 
when it adapts itself at once to all the wards of the lock, however many 
and complex. Of course, this deeper interpretation was reserved for the 
'future edification of the Church. The lawyer naturally took and was 
meant to take the meaning which lay upon the surface ; nor will the 
parable lose its value to us, as showing forth the pity and love of man to 
his fellow, because it also shadows forth the crowning act of mercy and 
love shown by the Son of man to the entire race. 

The traveller then is the personified human Nature, or Adam as he 

* Let us not miss the iyh airo^dxTw, "/will repay thee." Trouble not the poor 
man upon that score ; I will take those charges on myself; or it might be, Fear 
not thou to be a loser ; / will be thy paymaster. 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 259 

is the representative and head of the race. He has left Jerusalem, the 
heavenly city, the city of the vision of peace, and is travelling toward 
Jericho, he is going down toward it, the profane city, the city which was 
under a curse. (Josh. vi. 26 ; 1 Kin. xvi. 34.) But no sooner has he 
forsaken the holy city and the presence of his God, and turned his de- 
sires toward the world, than he falls under the power of him who is at 
once a robber and a murderer (John viii. 44), and by him and his evil 
angels is stripped of the robe of his original righteousness ; nor this 
only, but grievously wounded, left full of wounds and almost mortal 
strokes, every sin a gash from which the life-blood of his soul is copiously 
flowing.* Yet is he at the same time not altogether dead ;f for as all 
the cares of the good Samaritan would have been expended in vain upon 
the poor traveller, had the spark of life been wholly extinct, so a re- 
covery for man would have been impossible, if there had been nothing 
to recover, no spark of divine life, which by a heavenly breath might 
again be fanned into flame — no truth which, though detained in un- 
righteousness, might' yet be delivered and extricated from it. When the 
angels fell, as it was by a free self-determining act of their own will, 
with no solicitation from without, from that moment they were not as 
one half-dead, but altogether so, and no redemption was possible for them. 
But man is " half dead ;" — he has still a conscience witnessing for God ; 
evil is not his good, however little he may be able to resist its tempta- 
tions ; he has still the sense that he has lost something, and at times a 
longing for the restoration of the lost. His case is desperate as concerns 
himself and his own power to restore himself, but not desperate, if taken 
in hand ty an almighty and all-merciful Physician. 

And who else but such a Divine Physician shall give him back what 
he has lost, shall heal and bind up the bleeding hurts of his soul ? Can 
the law do it ? The apostle answers, it could not ; " if there had been 
a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have 

* H. de Sto. Victore {Annott. in Luc.) : Homo iste .... genus designat huma- 
mim, quod in primis parentibus supernam civitatem deserens, in hujus seculi et 
exilii miseriam per culpam corruens ; per antiqui hostis fraudulentiam veste in- 
nocentiae et immortalitatis est spoliatum, et originalis culpae vitiis graviter vulne- 
ratum. See Ambrose, Exp. in Luc, 1. 7, c. 73 ; Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxxv. 
6, and the sermon (Horn. 34, in Luc.) which Jerome has translated out of Origen. 
For the later Gnostic perversions of the parable in this direction, see Neander, 
Kirch. Gesck., v. 5, p. 1121. 

f H. de Sto. Victore : Quamvis enim tanta malitia possit affici ut nihil diligat 

boni non tamen ignorantia tanta excsecari potest, ut nihil congnoscat boni 

Hostilis gladius hominem penitus non extinxit, dum in eo naturalis boni dignitatem 
omnino delere non potuit. Augustine ( Queest. Evang. 1. 2, qu. 19) : Ex parte qua 
potest intelligere et cognoscere Deum, vivus est homo ; ex parte qua peccatis con- 
tabescit et premitur, mortuus est. 



260 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

"been by the law." (Gal. iii. 21.*) The law was like Elisha's staff, which 
might he laid on the face of the dead child, hut life did not return to it 
the more (2 Kin. iv. 21); Elisha himself must come ere the child re- 
« vive.f Or as Theophylact here expresses it : " The law came and 
stood over him where he lay, but then, overcome by the greatness of his 
wounds, and unable to heal them, departed." Nor could the sacrifices 
do better ; they could not " make the comers thereunto perfect," nor u take 
away sins," nor "purge the conscience." The law, whether natural 
or revealed, could not quicken, neither could the sacrifices truly abolish 
guilt and reconcile us unto God. The priest and the Levite were alike 
powerless to help: so that in the eloquent words of a scholar of St. Ber- 
nard's,;]; " Many passed us by, and there was none to save. That great 
patriarch, Abraham, passed us by, for he justified not others, but was 
himself justified in the faith of one to come. Moses passed us by, for 
he was not the giver of grace, but of the law, and of that law which 
leads none to perfection : for righteousness is not by the law. Aaron 
passed us by, the priest passed us by, and by those sacrifices which he 
continually offered, was unable to purge the conscience from dead works 
to serve the living God. Patriarch and prophet and priest passed us by, 
helpless both in will and deed, for they themselves also lay wounded in 
that wounded man. Only that true Samaritan beholding was moved 
with compassion, as he is all compassion, and poured oil into the wounds, 
that is, himself into the hearts, purifying all hearts by faith. Therefore 
the faith of the Church passes by all, till it reaches him who alone 
would not pass it by."§ (Rom. viii. 3.) 

* The selection of this passage, Gal. iii. 16-23, for the Epistle on the Sunday 
(the thirteenth after Trinity), when this parable supplies the Gospel, shows I think, 
very clearly, the interpretation which the Church puts upon the parable. The 
Gospel and Epistle agree in the same thing, that the law cannot quicken, that 
righteousness is not by it, but by faith in Christ Jesus. 

■f Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. lxx. 15. 

X Gillebert. His works are to be found at the beginning of the second volume of 
the Benedictine edition of St. Bernard. He carried on and completed the exposition 
of the Canticles which Bernard had left unfinished at his death. — Compare a noble 
passage in Clemens Alex., Quis Dives Salv., c. 29. Tls 5' av &\\os efy ir\i]v avrbs 
6 2a>rr?p ; fj rts /xaWov rj/xas iXcfiffas iKeivov, robs virb ruv KOCTfxoKparSpuv rod ckStovs 
bxiyov re&avaroofx&ovs ro7s tto\\o7s rpav/xaffi, <p6/3ois, eVid-v/ziais, 6pya7s, Xvirais, atrdrais. 
7)8ovcus ; rovrcov 5e rwv rpavfxdrcou /xouos, larpbs 'lyaovs, iKKSinruv &pdr]U ra irafrij 
irp6p^piC a ' out Sxrirep 6 v6jxos xpiXa ra airoreXea/xara, robs Kupirobs rG>v irovrjpcov <pvru>v, 
aXXa. t\\v a^LPTjv ttjv kavrov Trpbs ras pi(as rrjs KaKias irpoo'ayaydiv ' ovtos 6 rbv otiov, rb 
ol/xa T7)S a/xireXov rov Aa/315, eKX^as fj/juv iirl ras rerpoo/xevas xpvx^s, 6 rb e/c o"nXdyxvu>v 
irvev/xaros eXaiov irpoaej/eyKoov Kal eirto'atyiXevSfxeuos ' ovtos 5 robs r^js vyetas icai coott]- 
pias decr/xobs aXvrovs eViSe^as, aydwrjv, tt'kttiv, iXirtda ' ovtos 6 8iaKOve7i/ ayyeXovs Kal 
apxas Kal i^ovcrlas rj/x7i/ virord^as iitl /xeyaXcp fjunr&cS, 5i6ri Kal avrol eXev&epto&ijo'ovTax 
airb rrjs narpai6rr\ros rov k6o-/xov irapa rrjj/ airoKa\v\piv rrjs 5o|t] ? rosy vlwv rov Qeov. 

<\ The argument that Augustine uses more than once (as Semi. 171, c. 2) in 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN". 261 

If it is absolutely needful to give a precise meaning to the oil and the 
wine, we might say, with Chrysostom, that the wine is the blood of Pas- 
sion, the oil the anointing of the Holy Spirit.* On the binding tip of the 
wounds, one might observe that the sacraments are often spoken of in 
the language of the early Church as the ligaments for the wounds of the 
soul.f It is moreover a common image in the Old Testament for the 
healing of all spiritual hurts.J When we find the Samaritan setting the 
wounded man on his own beast, and therefore of. necessity himself 
pacing on foot by his side,§ we can scarcely help drawing a comparison 
with him, who though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that 
we through his poverty might be rich, — the Son of man who came not 

proof that our Lord intended himself to he understood by this Samaritan, is 
singular. He argues thus: Cum duo essent verba conviciosa objecta Domino, 
dictumque illi esset, Samaritanus es et daemonium habes, poterat respondere : Nee 
Samaritanus sum, nee daemonium habeo : respondet autem, Ego dasmonium non 
habeo. Quod respondit, refutavit : quod tacuit, confirmavit. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. 
exxxvi. 3. 

* They were sometimes interpreted differently ; the oil as the blanda consolatio, 
the wine as the austera increpatio. Thus Bernard says of the good pastor : Sama- 
ritanus sit, custodiens et observans quando oleum misericordiae, quando vinum 
fervoris exhibeat; and beautifully, and at more length, In Cant., Serm. 44, 3. So 
too Gregory the Great {Moral., 1. 20, c. 5) : Inesse rectoribus debet et juste conso- 
lans misericordia, et pie saeviens disciplina. Hinc est quod semivivi illius vulneri- 
bus, qui a Samaritano in stabulum ductus est, et vinum adhibetur et oleum ; ut 
per vinum mordeantur vulnera, per oleum foveantur : quatenus unusquisque qui 
sanandis vulneribus prseest, in vino morsum districtionis adhibeat, in oleo mollitiem 
pietatis : per vinum mundentur putrida, per oleum sananda foveantur. And very 
beautiful is the prayer into which in another place he has resolved this whole 
history {Exp. in Ps. li.): Utinam, Domine Jesu, ad me misericordia motus, digneris 
accedere, qui descendens ab Jerusalem in Jericho, proruens scilicet de summis ad 
infirma, de vitalibus ad infirma, in angelos tenebrarum incidi, qui non solum gratias 
spiritalis mihi vestimentum abstulerunt, sed etiam plagis impositis semivivum reli- 
querunt. Utinam peccatorum meorum vulnera, data mihi recuperandas salutis 
fiducia. alliges, ne deterius saeviant, si sanari desperent. Utinam oleum mihi re- 
missionis adhibeas, et vinum compunctionis infundas. Quod si in jumentum tuum 
me imposueris, de terra inopem, pauperem de stercore suscitabis. Tu es enim qui 
peccata nostra pertulisti, qui pro nobis quae non rapueras exsolvisti. Si in stabu- 
lum me Ecclesiae tuae duxeris, corporis et sanguinis tui me refectione cibabis. Si 
curam mei egeris, nee praecepta tua praetereo, nee frementium rabiem bestiarum 
incurro. Custodia enim tua iudigeo, quamdiu carnem hanc corruptibiliem porto. 
Audi ergo me, Samaritane, spoliatum et vulneratum, flentem et gementem, invo- 
cantem et cum David clamantem Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam miseri- 
cordiam tuam. 

f Augustine not precisely so : Alligatio vulnerum est cohibitio peccatorum ; the 
fctanching of the ever-flowing fountain of evil in the heart. 

^ Cf. Ps. cxlvi. 3. (LXX) : 'O ldfj.evos rous cvvr^rpijxiuovs ttjv KapSluv, ko\ Se&fitfap 
rk <rvvrp(fjLfxara abrS>v, 

§ Lyser : Suo quasi incommodo nostra commoda quaesivit. 



262 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

to be ministered unto, but to minister — " who bis own self bare our sins 
in his own body." Neither is it far-fetched to see in the inn the figure 
of the Church, the place of spiritual refection, in which the healing of 
souls is ever going forward, — by some called on this last account a 
hospital, — whither the merciful Son of man brings all those whom he 
has rescued from the hand of Satan, and in which he cares for them 
evermore.* In harmony with this we find Christ's work continually 
set forth in Scripture as a work of healing ; for instance, Mai. iv. 2 ; 
Hos. xiv. 4; Ps. ciii. 3; Matt. xiii. 15 j Rev. xxii. 2j and typically, 
Num. xxi. 9. 

And if, like the Samaritan, who was obliged on the morrow to take 
his departure,! he is not always in body present with those whose cure 
he has begun, if for other reasons it is expedient even for them that he 
should go away, yet he makes a rich provision of grace for them dur- 
ing his absence, and till the time of his coming again. It would be en- 
tering into curious minutiae, which rather tend to bring discredit on this 
scheme of interpretation, to affirm decidedly of the two pence, that they 
mean either the two sacraments, or the two testaments, or the word and 
the sacraments, or unreservedly to accede to any other of the ingenious 
explanations which have been offered for them. It is sufficient that 
they signify all gifts and graces, sacraments, powers of healing, of 
remission of sins, or other powers which Christ has left with his Church 
to enable it to keep house for him till his return. As the Samaritan 
took out two pence and gave them .to the host, and said, " Take care of 
him ;" — even so the Lord Jesus said unto Peter, and in him, to all his 
fellow apostles, having first promised unto them heavenly gifts, and 
richly furnished them for their work, " Feed my sheep," " Feed my 
lambs." To them, and in them to all that succeed them, he has com- 
mitted an economy of the truth, that as stewards of the mysteries of 
God, they may dispense those mysteries as shall seem best for the 
health and salvation of his people. And as it was said to the host, 
u Whatsoever thou spendest more, ivhen I come again Iicill repay tlwe;"% 
so the Lord has promised that no labor shall be in vain in him — that 
he will count what is done to the least of his brethren, as done unto 
him — that they who " feed the flock of God," not by constraint but will- 

* Augustine brings out another side of the similitude : Stabulum est Ecclesia, 
ubi reficiuntur viatores de peregrinatione redeuntes in seternam patriam : or it is 
an inn (iravdox^ov), because (Origen, Horn. 34 in Luc.) universos volentes introire 
suspiciat. 

t Ambrose (Exp in Luc, 1. 7, c. 78) : Non vacabat Samaritano huic din in 
terris degere ; redeundum ed erat, unde descenderat. 

$ Melancthon : Si quid supererogaveris, solvam : quasi dicat : Accedunt labo- 
res, pericula, inopia consilii, in his omnibus adero et juvabo te. 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 263 

ingly ; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind," — they, " when the 
chief Shepherd shall appear," " shall receive a crown of glory that 
fadeth not away." (1 Pet. v. 2, 4.)* 

It is difficult enough to admire the divine wisdom with which the 
Saviour, having brought to an end this affecting parable, reverses the 
question of the lawyer, and asks, " Which noiv of these three thinkest 
thou ivas neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves ?" The lawyer 
had asked, " who is the neighbor to whom I am bound to show the ser- 
vice of love ?" But the Lord asks, " Who is a neighbor, he who shows 
love, or he who shows it not?" — for herein lay the great lesson, that it is 
not the object which is to determine the love, but that love has its own 
measure in itself ; it is like the sun, which does not ask on what it shall 
shine, or what it shall warm, but shines and warms by the very law 
of its own being, so that there is nothing hidden from its light and from 
its heat. The lawyer had said, " Declare to me my neighbor ; what 
marks a man to be such ? — is it one faith, one blood, the bonds of mutual 
benefits, or what else, that I may know to whom I owe this debt of love?" 
The Lord rebukes the question by holding up before him a man, and this 
a despised Samaritan, who so far from asking that question, freely and 
largely exercised love towards one who certainly had none of the signs 
such as the lawyer conceived would mark out a neighbor in his sense 
of the word. The parable is a reply, not to the question, for to that it 
is no reply,f but to the spirit out of which the question proceeded. It 
says, " You ask who is your neighbor ? I will show you a man who 
asked not that question, and then your own heart shall be judge between 
you and him, which had most of the mind of God, which was most truly 
the doer of his will, the imitator of his perfections." The parable is an 

* Cyprian's application of the parable (Ep. 51) forms a sort of connecting link 
between these two interpretations, the literal and the allegorical : the wounded 
man is a sinning brother, in this particular case one who had not stood steadfast in 
the time of persecution. Cyprian, who desired to follow the milder course with 
these lapsed, and to readmit them to Church communion, exclaims : Jacet ecce 
saucius frater ab adversario in acie vulneratus. Inde diabolus conatur occidere, 
quern vulneravit. hinc Christus hortatur ne in totum pereat quern redemit. Cui de 
duobus assistemus, in cujus partibus stamus 1 Utrumne diabolo favemus ut peri- 
mat, et semianimem fratrem jacentem, sicut in evangelio sacerdos et Levites, prae- 
terimus 1 An vero ut sacerdotes Dei et Christi, quod Christus et docuit et fecit 
imitantes, vulneratum de adversarii faucibus rapimus, ut curatum Deo judici 
reservemus. Cf. Ambrose, De PceniL, 1. 1, c. 6 ; and Chrysostom, Adv. Jud., 
Orat. 8, 3. 

t Maldonatus is the only commentator I have seen who has fairly put this, and 
acknowledged the difficulty which is on the face of the parable. It is one of the 
many merits of this most intolerant and most abusive Jesuit (Maldonatus maledi- 
centissimus), that he never slights a difficulty, nor pretends not to see it, but fairly 
and fully states it, whether he can resolve it or not. 



264 THE GOOD SAMARITAN, 

appeal to a better principle in the querist's heart, from the narrow and 
unloving theories and systems in which he had been trained. It is to be 
hoped that through no unwillingness to acknowledge the truth, though 
it has something of that appearance, the lawyer in reply to the Lord's 
question, "Who was this poor man's true neighbor ? circuitously replies, 
" He ivho shoived mercy on him ;" grudging to give the honor directly 
and by name to a Samaritan.* But having acknowledged this, whether 
grudgingly or freely, " Go" said the Lord to him, now we trust a 
humbler and larger-hearted man, " Go, and do tJwu liketvise." 

These last words will hardly allow one to agree with those, who in 
later times have maintained that this parable and the discourse that led 
to it are, in fact, a lesson on justification by faith — that the Lord sent 
the questioner to the law, to the end that, being by that convinced of sin 
and of his own short-comings, he might discover his need of a Saviour. 
His intention seemed rather to make the lawyer aware of the great gulf 
which lay between his knowing and his doing, — how little his actual ex- 
ercise of love kept pace with his intellectual acknowledgment of the debt 
of love due from him to his fellow-men : on which subject no doubt he 
had secret misgivings himself, when he asked, "Who is my neighbor?" 
It is true indeed that this our sense of how short our practice falls of our 
knowledge, must bring us to the conviction that we cannot live by the 
keeping of the law, that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justi- 
fied — so that here also we shall get at last to faith as that which alone 
can justify : but this is a remoter consequence, not, as it seems to m& } 
the immediate purpose of the parable. 

* So Bengel: Non invitus absinet legisperitus appellatione propri4 Samarits). 



XVIII. 
THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 

Luke xi. 5-8. 

The connection between this parable and the words that go before is 
easy to be traced. The disciples had asked to be taught in what words 
they should pray, " Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his dis- 
ciples." He graciously gives them that perfect form which has ever 
since been the treasure of the Church : but having done so, he instructs 
them also by this parable in what spirit they must pray, even in- the 
spirit of persevering faith, " continuing instant in prayer." There is the 
same argument as in the parable of the Unjust Judge, one from the less 
to the greater, or more accurately, from the worse to the better, — but 
with this difference, that here the narrow-heartedness and selfishness of 
man is set against the liberality of God, while there it is his unrighteous- 
ness which is tacitly contrasted with the righteousness of God. The 
conclusion is, if selfish man can yet be won by prayer and importunity 
to give, and unjust man to do right, how much more certainly shall the 
bountiful Lord bestow, and the righteous Lord do justice.* And perhaps 
there is this further difference, that here it is intercessory prayer, prayer 
for the needs of others, in which we are bidden to be instant ; while 
there it is rather for our own needs. Yet must we not urge in either 
case, the illustration so far, as to conceive of prayer as though it were 
an overcoming of God's reluctance, when it is, in fact, a laying hold of 
his highest willingness.! For though there is an aspect under which 

* Augustine (Ep. 130, c. 8) : Ut hinc intelligeremus, si dare cogitur, qui cum 
dormiat, a petente excitatur invitus, quanto det benignius, qui nee dormire novit, 
et dormientes nos excitat ut petamus. 

f This is finely expressed by Dante (Parad. 1. 20), in words which have aa 
much a theological as a political interest : — 

Regnum coelorum violenzia pate 

Da caldo amore e da viva speranza, 

Che vince la divina volontate, 

Non a guisa che 1' uorao all' uom sovranza, 

Ma vince lei, perche vuole esser vinta, 

E vinta vince con sua beninanza. 



266 THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 

God may present himself to us, similar to that of the Unjust Judge and 
this churlish neighbor, yet is there ever this difference, — that his is a 
seeming neglect and unwillingness to grant, theirs a real. Under such 
an aspect of seeming unwillingness to hear, did the merciful Son of man 
present himself to the Syro-Phoenician woman. (Matt. xv. 21.) But 
why ? Not because he was reluctant to give, but because he knew that 
her faith was strong enough to bear this trial, and that in the end, though 
the trial for the moment might be hard, it would prove a blessing to her, 
more mightily calling out that faith ; since faith ever needs to find some 
resistance, before it can be called out in any strength. In like manner 
the angel of the Lord, the great Covenant Angel, contended with Jacob, 
and wrestled with him all the # night, yet allowed himself at the last to 
be overcome by him, and left a blessing behind him ; and Jacob hence- 
forth was Israel, that is, was permanently lifted up through that conflict 
into a higher state, marked by that nobler • name which henceforth he 
bore, — " for as a Prince hast thou power with God and with men, and 
hast prevailed." (Gen. xxxii. 28.) 

The parable with which now we have to do, rests on a humble and 
familiar incident of our common life ; and spoken to humble men, it may 
easily have come within the limits of their own experience : " Which of 
you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say 
unto him, Friend, leiui me three loaves : for a friend of mine in his jour- 
ney is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him ?" I do not see 
in these words any deeper meaning than lies on the surface ; yet it is 
well worth observing that they have afforded ample scope for allegorical 
and mystical interpretations, and some of these of considerable beauty. 
For instance, it has been said that the guest newly arrived is the spirit 
v of man, which, weary of its wanderings in the world, of a sudden desires 
heavenly sustenance, — something that will truly nourish and satisfy it, — 
begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness. But the host, that is, 
man, in so far as he is " sensual, having not the Spirit," has nothing to 
set before this unexpected guest, and in this his spiritual poverty and 
distress,* is here taught to appeal unto God, that from him he may re- 
ceive that which is bread indeed, and spiritual nourishment for the soul.f 

* "At midnight:" In media, tribulatione constitutus. Augustine. 

f Bede {Horn, in Due. xi.) : Amicus qui venit de via., ipse noster est animus, 
qui toties a nobis recedit, quoties ad appetenda terrena et temporalia foris vagatur. 
Redit ergo, ccelestique alimonia refici desiderat, cum in se reversus superna coepcrit 
ac spiritualia meditari. De quo pulchre qui petierat, adjungit, se non habere quod 
ponant ante ilium, quoniam animss post seculi tenebras Deum suspiranti, nil prater 
eum cogitare nilque libet intueri. And Bernard {In Rogat., Serm.) : Amicum ve- 
nientem ad me, non alium intelligo quam meipsum, cum transitoria deserens, ad 
eor redeo: Yenit amicus de regione longinqua, ubi pascere porcos, et ipsorum sili- 



I 



THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 267 

There is, besides, another interesting adaptation of the parable, which 
Augustine gives. He is urging upon his hearers the duty of being able 
to give a reason for their faith, a reason not merely defensive, but one 
which shall win and persuade : and this, because it might often happen 
that some one from the yet heathen world, or it might be a heretic, or 
even a nominal Catholic, weary of his wanderings in error, weary of the 
bondage of sin, and desiring now to know something of the Christian 
faith, but lacking confidence or opportunity to go to the bishop or cate- 
chists, might betake himself to some one of them, desiring fuller instruc- 
tion in the faith. While this was possible, he therefore urges upon all, 
•^that they have what to communicate ; or if, when such occasion arises, 
when such a friend comes to them, craving spiritual hospitality, they 
find they have nothing to set before him, he instructs them out of this 
parable what they should do, and to whom they should betake themselves 
for the supply of their own needs and the needs of their friend, — that 
they go to God, praying that he would teach them, that so they might 
be enabled to teach others.* Vitringa's explanation! is a modification 
of this last. With him the guest is the heathen world ; the host who 
receives him, the servants and disciples of Jesus, who are taught from 
this parable that they can only nourish those that come to them with 
bread of life, as they themselves shall receive the same from God, which 
therefore they must solicit with all perseverance and constancy of sup- 

quas insatiabiliter esurire solebat. Venit fame laborans, sed heu me ! pauperem 
eligit hospitem, et vacuum ingreditur habitaculum. Quid faciam huic amico mi- 
sero et miserabili 1 Fateor amicus est, sed ego mendicus. Quid venisti ad me, 
amice, in necessitate tanta % Festina, inquit, discurre, suscita amicum tuum ilium 
magnum, quo majorem dilectionem nemo habet, sed neque substantiam ampliorem. 
Clama et die, Amice, commoda mihi tres panes. Compare Augustine {Qucest. 
Evang., 1. 2, qu. 21); and a discourse wbicb is not Augustine's, but has sometimes 
been attributed to him (Serm. 85, Appendix), where the explanation given, at first 
f sight seems slightly different, but in reality comes to the same thing. (Every good 
desire, visiting the soul and awakening in it a hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, — a longing after God, is the guest from the way, whose hunger can only be 
satisfied by spiritual nourishment, — by the bread from heaven. » 

* Serm. 105, c. 2 : Venit tibi amicus de via, id est, de vita hujus seculi, in qua. 
omnes velut peregrini transeunt, nee ullus quasi possessor manet : sed omni homini 
dicitur, Refectus es, transi, age iter, da venturo locum. Aut forte de via mala, 
hoc est, de vita mala, fatigatus nescio quis amicus tuus, non inveniens veritatem, 
qua audita et percepta beatus fiat: sed lassatus in omni cupiditate et egestate 
seculi, venit ad te, tanquam ad Christianum, et dicit : Redde mihi rationem, 
fac me Christianum. Et interrogat quod forte tu per simplicitatem fidei nesciebas, 
et ncn est unde reficias esurientem, et te admonitus invenis indigentem. Tibi forte 
sufficiebat simplex fides, illi non sufficit. Nunquid deserendus est 1 nunquid de 
domo projiciendus ? Ergo ad ipsum Dominum, ad ipsum cum quo familia requi- 
escit, pulsa orando, pete, insta. 

t Erklar. d. Parab., p. 763. 



268 THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 

plication, — at all events a most important truth, whether it is here to he 
found or not, for those that have to feed the flock of Christ.* In like 
manner in the " three " loaves various Scriptural triads have been traced, 
as for instance, it has sometimes been said that the host craving the 
three loaves, craves the knowledge of the Trinity, of God in his three 
persons, f sometimes again, it is the three choicest gifts and graces of 
the Spirit, faitl^hope, and charity, which he desires may be his.J 

When he from within replies, " Trouble me not, tlie door is now shut; 11 
it means evidently more than merely closed ; he would say, " The door 
is fastened, barred, and bolted, the house is made up for + he night, and 
at this unseasonable hour I cannot disturb my children, who are now 
with me in bed, by rising and giving thee." Theophylact makes these 
last words yet further significant ; " My children are with me in bed ;" 
that is, "All who by earlier application to me have obtained right to be 
called my children, have secured their admission into my kingdom, and 
are now resting with me there ; it is too late to apply, the door is closed, 
the time is past."§ The lesson to be here learned would then be this, 
that through earnest importunate prayer, even lost opportunities may be 

V made up and recovered. || 

." I say unto you, Though he ivill not rise and give him, because he is 
his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as 
many as he needeth." Our version, translating u importunity" has 
rather softened the original word, which might be rendered by a stronger 

^ term ; it is his " shameless?iess "If which extorts the gift. At the same 
time, the shamelessness which is here attributed to the petitioner is 
greatly mitigated by the consideration, that it is not for himself but for 
another, and that he may not be wanting in the sacred duties of hospi- 



* Augustine : Unde vivo, inde dico ; unde pascor, hoc ministro. Compare a 
sermon by Guerricus, in the Benedict, edit, of St. Bernard, v. 2, p. 1023. 

f Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cii. 5. Quasi. Evang., 1. 2, c. 21. 

■\. Thauler gives an ingenious reason, why it should be rather charity alone : Ut 
enim quamlibet pretosia mundi cibaria neque utilia, neque jucunda, neque comes- 
tabilia sunt absque pane, ita etiam quidquid agas Deo non multum placet, si 
absque caritate filt. Euthymius : 'Aprovs' rhs bpeirriKas ruv ]>vx&v 5idaaKa\(as. 

§ Augustine : Quid pulsas sine tempore, qui piger fuisti cum tempore ^ Dies 
fuit, et in lumine non ambulasti, nox supervenit, et pulsare ccepisti. 

|| It is possible that the word which we translate "children" would be fitter 
translated "servants" and the sense then would be, " I cannot myself come, and 
I have none whom I can send; my household as well as myself are gone to rest." 
It is clear that to TratZla has been so understood by Augustine (Ep. 130, c. 8) : Jam 
cum suis servis dormientem petitor instantissimus et molestissimus excitavit. 

Tf 'Aj/aiSeta. The Vulgate gives it by a happily chosen word, improbitas, which, 
like the adjective from which it is drived, may describe unweariedness in a good 
cause as well as in a bad. 



THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 269 

tality, that lie so pertinaciously urges his request.* Through this per- 
tinacity f he at length obtains, not merely the three which he asked, but 
S " as many as he needeth" like that woman already referred to, from whom 
the Lord at first seemed to have shut up all his compassion, but to whom 
at last he opened the full treasure-house of his grace, and bid her to help 
herself, saying, ' : woman, great is thy faith ! be it unto thee even as 
thou wilt." Augustine too observes, that he who would not at first so 

u much as send one of his house, himself now rises, and supplies all the 
wants of his friend ; and adds on the return of prayers not being always 
immediate many excellent observations, as this, When sometimes God 
gives tardily, he commends his gifts, he does not deny them ; — Things 

/ long desired, are more sweet in their obtainment ; those quickly given, 
soon lose their value : — and again, God for a time withholds his gifts, 
that thou mayest learn to desire great things greatly. J — Faith, and pa- 
tience, and humility, are all called into exercise by this temporary denial 
of a request. It is then seen who will pray always and not faint, and 
who will prove but as the leopard, which if it does not attain its prey at 
the first spring, turns sullenly back and cannot be induced to repeat the 
attempt. § The parable concludes with words in which the same duty of 
prayer is commended, and now no longer in a figure, but plainly : " And 
I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you."\\ The three repetitions of the 
command are more than mere repetitions ; since to seek is more than to 
ask, and to knock than to seek ; and thus in this ascending scale of 
earnestness, an exhortation is given, not merely to prayer, but to increas- 

* In the same manner Abraham's conversation with God (Gen. xviii. 23-33). 
which almost rises into a like avalSeia, is not the asking any thing for himself, hut 
intercession for the people of Sodom. 

f Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cii. 5) : Extorsit tsedio quod non possit merito. 
The Jews have a proverb, Impudentia est regnum sine corona ; and again they say, 
Impudentia etiam coram Deo proficit. Von Meyer {Blatter fur hohere Wahrheit, v. 
5, p. 45) has some interesting remarks on the avalSeia of this petitioner, and how it 
is reconcilable with the humility which is praised in the publican. (Luke xviii. 13.) 

$ Cum aliquando tardius dat, commendat dona, non negat. — Diu desiderata dul- 
cius obtinentur, cito data vilescunt ; and again, Ut discas magna magne desiderare. 

<) Stella : Sunt multi qui naturae sunt et conditionis leonispardi, qui si primo 
saltu vel secundo non assequitur prasdam, non amplius earn insequitur. Ita isti 
sunt qui prima oratione vel secunda non exauditi, protinus ab oratione cessant, et 
impatientise nota signantur. 

|j Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Man., 1. 2, c. 21) had made only one of these 
three commands (Matt. vii. 7) to have direct reference to prayer, while the other 
two he referred to other forms of earnest striving after the kingdom of God ; — but 
in his Retractations he says, no doubt more accurately : Ad instantissimam oratio- 
nem omnia referuntur. Their position in relation to this parable leaves no dgubt 
on the matter. 



270 THE FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT. 

v ing urgency in prayer, even till the suppliant carry away the blessing 
which he requires, and which God is only waiting for the due time to 
arrive that he may give him.* All that we have here is indeed a com- 
mentary on words of our Lord spoken at another time, " The kingdom 
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." 

* Augustine : Deus ad hoc se peti "alt, ut capaces doncram ejus fiant, qui 
petunt; and again: Non dat nisi peten*< ^e det non capienti. 



XIX. 

THE RICH FOOL. 

Luke xii. 16-21. 

la the midst cf one of our Lord's most interesting discourses an inter- 
ruption occurs. One of his hearers had so slight an interest in the 
spiritual truths which he was communicating, but had so much at heart 
the redressing of a wrong, which he believed himself to have sustained 
in his worldly interests, that, as would seem, he could not wait for a 
more convenient season, but broke in upon the Lord's teaching with that 
request which gave occasion for this parable, "Master, speak to my 
brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." It has been sometimes 
taken for granted, that this man who desired a division of the inherit- 
ance, had no right to what he was here claiming, and was only seeking 
to make an unfair use of the Saviour's influence. But how much does 
this supposition weaken the moral. All men, without any especial 
teaching, would condemn such unrighteousness as this. But that love 
of the world, which, keeping itself within limits of decency and legality, 
yet takes all the affections of the heart from Grod, and robs divine things 
of all their interest — against that men have need to be continually 
warned ; and such a warning is here, — a warning, not against unright- 
eousness, but against covetousness ; # for this may display itself in the 
manner and temper in.which we hold and reclaim our own as truly as 
in the undue snatching at that of others : — " Take heed and beware of 
covetousness."! From this man's confident appeal to Jesus, made in 

* Not aSiKia, but TrXcovetfa. It is exactly opposed to the avTapxeia, which has 
always enough, as the Trteovttfa has never. 

t In the Vulgate, Cavete ab omni avaritia. So Lachmann, cbrb m da-rjs ir\eove£las. 
The emphasis on this "all" is strikingly brought out by Augustine (Serm. 107, 
c. 3), as though Christ were herein saying to each that stood by, Forte tu avarum 
et cupidum diceres, si quaereret aliena ; Ego autem dico cupide et avare non appetas 

nee tua Non solum avarus est qui rapit aliena : sed et ille avarus est qui cupid& 

servat sua. 



272 THE RICH F00u. 

the presence of the whole multitude, it is probable that his brother did 
withhold from him a part of the patrimony, which fell justly to his 
share. But it was the extreme inopportuneness of the season which he 
chose for urging his claim, that showed him as one in whom the worldly 
prevailed to the danger of making him totally irreceptive of the spiritual, 
and that drew this warning from the lips of the Lord. For that he 
should have desired Christ as an umpire or arbitrator, — and such onlj 
the word in the original means (see Acts vii. 27, 35 ; Exod. ii. 14), such 
too the Lord, without publicly recognized authority, could only have 
been* — this in itself had nothing sinful. St. Paul himself recommended 
this manner of settling differences (1 Cor. vi. 1-6), and how weighty a 
burden this arbitration afterwards became to the bishops of the Church 
is well known. f 

In the request itself there was nothing sinful, yet still the Lord ab- 
solutely refused to accede to it ; he declined here, as in every other case, 
to interfere in the affairs of civil life. It was indeed most true, that his 
word and doctrine received into the hearts of men, would modify and 
change the whole framework of civil society, that his word and his life 
was the seed out of which a Christendom would evolve itself, but it was 
from the inward to the outward that he would work. His adversaries 
more than once sought to thrust upon him the exercise of a jurisdiction 
which he so carefully avoided, as in the case of the woman taken in 
adultery (supposing that passage to belong to the true Gospel of St. 
John), — as in that of the Roman tribute. But each time he avoided the 
snare which was laid for him, keeping himself within the limits of the 
moral and spiritual world, as that from which alone effectual improve- 
ments in the outer life of man could proceed. £ 

* Grotius explains fiepKTTTjs : Qui familiae herciscundae, comrnuni dividundo, 
aut finibus regundis arbiter sumiter. Lachmann has admitted Kpir^y, in the place 
of Si/mcn-^, into his text. — See Tertullian (Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 28) for the reasons 
which moved the Lord here to use the very phrase with which the Israelite 
(Exod. ii. 14) put back the arbitration of Moses ; and in Hammond's Paraphrase 
(in loc). 

t Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii. 115) complains of this distraction from 
spiritual objects, and that he was not allowed to say to those who came to him 
with cases for arbitration, " "Who made me a judge or a divider over you ?" And 
Bernard, writing to Pope Eugenius, especially warns him against this distraction 
of mind, arising from the multitude of these worldly causes which would be 
brought before him. 

^ The latter part of ver. 15 is difficult, not that there is any difficulty in tracing 
the connection of thought, or the meaning, but that the sentence is more burdened 
with words than can be conveniently taken up into the construction. Euthymius, 
Theophylact, and others, and in modern times Paulus, would make this the mean- 
ing: When a man possesses much abundance, yet is not his (bodily) life one 
among his possessions ; in short, A man, though he is rich, cannot live for ever, 



THE RICH FOOL. 273 

The Lord having uttered a warning against covetousness, a sin 
which is always united with the trusting in uncertain riches (1 Tim. vi. 
17), for who that did not trust in them as a source of good, as a means 
of blessedness, would be so eager in their accumulation ? — he proceeds 
to Show by a parable the folly of such trust, — how, though man is ever 
dreaming that these worldly goods are the source of happiness, and is 
thus drawn to trust in them, rather than in the living God, yet in truth 
they cannot constitute a man's blessedness. For, besides other reasons, 
that only is blessedness, which has in it security and endurance ; but 
that earthly life, which is the necessary condition of drawing enjoyment 
out of worldly abundance, may come to an end at any moment, and then 
will ensue utter loss and destitution to him who has thus been laying up 
treasure for himself, instead of seeking to be rich toward God. 

" The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully." It 
was said loDg before, " The prosperity of fools shall destroy them" (Prov. 
i. 32), a truth to which this man sets his seal, for his prosperity ensnares 
him in a deeper worldliness, draws out the selfish propensities of his 
heart into stronger action.* In this respect how deep a knowledge of 
the human heart the warning of the Psalmist displays, " If riches increase, 
set not thy heart upon them." It might, at first sight, appear, that the 
time when we should be in chiefest danger of setting our heart upon 
riches, would be when we saw them escaping from our grasp, — perishing- 

or, Riches will not lengthen his life. It may certainly be said in favor of this ex- 
planation, that it suits well enough with the parable whieh follows, and it might 
pass, if it were this kind of flat morality which our Lord were in the habit of in- 
culcating, or if far) were ever in Scripture degraded to this lower sense, and used 
to designate the mere soulish life, the \\fvxn- It is much better to take 7] fa-f) here 
in that deeper sense, which in Scripture it has ever, as man's true life, — his bless- 
edness ; and then with Shults (ub. d. Parabel vom Voricalter, p. 79) to put a comma 
before and after h rw irepi<roreveiv tiv\, and translate thus: When a man comes to 
have abundance (h r. irepio: nv\), his life (his true life, — his blessedness) does not 
grow out of his wordly goods. Thus will be preserved all the force of the preposi- 
tion 4k, expressing the springing up or the growing out of one thing from another 
(see Luke xvi. 9 ; Acts i. 18 ; John iii. 5, 6 ; xviii. 36, at which last place the Lord 
asserts, his kingdom grows not out of an earthly root), and then the parable is 
brought in cofirmation. The sudden taking away of the rich worldling's goods, or 
which comes to the same thing, his sudden taking away from them, shows that 
his life, his true blessedness, was not from them, — that he had made a fearful 
mistake in supposing that it was : since the very idea of blessedness involves that 
of permanence, not of something that may slip from under a man's feet at any 
moment, which a happiness linked to a merely earthly life, and dependent upon 
the duration of that life, is ever liable to do ; and then, at the conclusion of the 
parable, a glimpse of the true (ayf) is opened to us as being a irXovreiv els Qe6v, a 
life, a blessedness, which is eternal as the God upon whom it is built. 

* Ambrose : Dat tibi frecunditatem Deus, ut aut vincat aut condemnet avari- 
tiarn tuam. 

18 



274 THE RICH FOOL. 

from under our hand. But all experience testifies the contrary, — that 
earthly losses are the remedy for covetousness, while increase in worldly 
goods is that which chiefly provokes to it, serving, not as water to quench, 
but as fuel to augment, the fire :* "He that loveth silver shall not be 
satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase." (Eccl. 
v. 13.) St. Basil, in the opening of his noble sermon f upon this para- 
ble, observes : " There are two manners of temptations, either afllictions 
torment the heart, as gold in the furnace, through the trial of faith work- 
ing patience, or often the very prosperities of life are too many in place 
of other temptation." But it seems a certain exaggeration when he ex- 
plains, as many others have done, the following words, "he thought 
within himself saying, What shall I do T* as though they were the 
utterance of one brought to sore straits and difficulties through the very 
abundance, for the sake of which others were envying him, — as though 
they were the anxious deliberations of one that was now at his wit's end, 
and knew not which way he should turn, who was in as painful perplex- 
ity through his riches as others are through their poverty.^ 

Rather, we should say, that the curtain is here drawn back, and we 
are admitted into the inner council-chamber of a worldling's heart, — 
rejoicing over his abundance, and realizing to the very letter the making 
" provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." As far as he may be 
said to be perplexed, this is his perplexity: " I have no room where to 
bestoiv my fruits," It has been well answered to him, " Thou hast barns, 
— the bosoms of the needy, — the houses of the widows, — the mouths of 
orphans and of infants." § If he had listened to the prudent admonition 
of the son of Sirach (xxix. 12), " Shut up alms in thy storehouses," he 
would not have found his barns too narrow. To one thus ignorant where 



* Plutarch in his excellent little treatise, Uepi <pi\on\ovTias, applies to the 
covetous the line, 

Tb <pdpfiaK6v aov tV v6<rov jue/^w iroie?, 

and the same truth is confessed in the Latin proverb : Avarum irritat pecunia, non 
satiat. Compare Seneca, Ad. Helv., c. 11; and the fine Eastern tale of Abdallah, 
the camel-driver, has the same moral. See also Augustine, Serm. 50, c. 4. 

f Ed. Bened., Paris, 1722, v. 2, p. 43 : and in the new Paris reprint, v. 2, p. 60. 

^ So Augustine: Turbavit hominem copia plusquam inopia. And Grotius 
quotes in this view: Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam. Thus too Gregory 
(Moral, 1. 15, c. 22) : angustia ex satietate nata ! De ubertate agri angustatur 
animus avari. Dicens namque, Quid faciam 1 profecto indicat quia votorum 
suorum affectibus pressus sub quodam rerum fasce laborabat. But TJnger's is a 
better account of these words : Opulentum describit parabola elath deliberantem. 

§ Ambrose (De Nabuthe, c. 7) : Habes apothecas, inopum sinus, viduarum do- 
oms, ora infantium. There is much else that is excellent on this parable. C£ 
Augustine,, Serm. 36, c. 9. 



THE RICH FOOL. 275 

to bestow bis goods and so in danger of losing them, Augustine gives 
this earnest affectionate admonition : u God desires not that thou shouldst 
lose thy riches, but that thou shouldst change their place; he has given 
thee a counsel, which do thou understand. Suppose a friend should 
enter thy house, and should find that thou hadst lodged thy fruits on a 
damp floor, and he, knowing by chance the tendency of those fruits to 
spoil, whereof thou wert ignorant, should give thee counsel of this sort, 
saying, Brother, thou losest the things which thou hast gathered with 
great labor ; thou hast placed them in a damp place ; in a few days they 
will corrupt ; — And what, brother, shall I do ? — Raise them to a higher 
room ; — thou wouldst listen to thy brother suggesting that thou shouldst 
raise thy fruits from a lower to a higher floor, and thou wilt not listen 
to Christ advising that thou raise thy treasure from earth to heaven, 
where that will not indeed be restored to thee which thou layest up, for 
he would have thee lay up earth that thou mayest receive heaven, lay up 
perishable things that thou mayest receive eternal."* 

This would have been his wisdom, but he determines otherwise — not 
to provide thus for himself " bags which wax not old, a treasure in the 
heaven which faileth not" (ver. 33), but on the contrary, " I will pull 
down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits 
and my goods." " Observe," says Theophylact on these words, "another 
folly, — my goods, and my fruits. — for he did not count that he had these 
from God, else, as a steward of God, he would otherwise have disposed 
of them, but he counted them the products of his own labors, — wherefore 
separating them exclusively for himself, he said, my goods, and my fruits." 
Yet according to the world's judgment there was nothing sinful in all 
this ; his riches were fairly gotf and this makes the example the better 
to suit the present occasion. Nor yet was there any thing which the 
world condemns in the plans which he laid out for his future enjoyment, 
in the decent Epicureanism which he meditated ; " / will say to my soul, 
Soul, tlwu hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
drink, and be merry?' 1 Having now at last, as he imagines, secured him- 
self against every thing that could disturb his felicity, he determines to 
rest from his labors, to enjoy that ease and quiet from which hitherto 
the anxious acquisition of wealth had hindered him ; like the rich man 
in another parable, to fare sumptuously every day. His plans of felicity, 
it may be observed, rise no higher than to this satisfying of the flesh, so 
that there is an irony as melancholy as it is profound in making him 
address this speech, not to his body, but to his soul — to that soul, which 

* Enarr. in Ps. xlviii. 9. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. xxxviii. 6. 

t Augustine (Scrm. 178. c. 2) : Non limite perturbato, non spoliato paupere, non 
drcumvento siinplice. 



276 THE RICH F00L - 

though thus capable of being dragged down into the basest service cf the 
flesh, imbodied and imbruted, was also capable of being informed by the 
Pivine Spirit, and of knowing and loving and glorifying God. 

He expects he shall thus nourish his soul "for many years" (see 
Sirac. v. 1), he boasts not merely of to-morrow, but of many years to 
come ; he expects, as Job did once, to multiply his days as the sand ; his 
felicity shall not soon come to an end, but to-morrow shall be as to-day, 
and much more abundant.* Compare with all this the words of the son 
of Sirach (xi. 18, 19), forming as they do a remarkable parallel : " There 
is that waxeth rich by his weariness and pinching, and this is the portion 
of his reward : whereas he saith, I have found rest, and now will eat con- 
tinually of my goods ; and yet he knoweth not what time shall come upon 
him, and that he must leave those things to others and die." Therefore 
deserves he the appellation of fool which immediately after is given him; 
"But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required 
of thee." " Thou fool "\ — this title is opposed to the opinion of his own 
prudence and foresight which he entertained, — " this night" to the many 
years that he promised to himself, — and that " soul" which he purposed 
to nourish and make fat, it is declared shall be inexorably " required" 
and painfully rendered up.J There is no need to inquire here, as hat* 
been sometimes done, in what way God spoke to the man, — whether by 
a sudden presentiment of approaching death, by some strong alarm of 
conscience, by some mortal sickness at this instant falling upon him, or 
by what other means. We are not to understand that in any of the&e 
ways God spake to him. It. was not with him as with the Babylonian 
king, while the word was in whose mouth there fell a voice fcon heaven 



* Tertullian : Provenientibus fructibus ampliationem horreorurn et longse 
securitatis spatia cogitavit. 

f See a striking Epistle (the 101st) of Seneca, on the sudden death of a rich 
acquaintance, where, among other things, he says : Quam stultum est aetateni dis- 
ponere ! ne crastino quidem dominamur. O quanta dementia est, spes longas 
inchoantium. Emam, sedificabo, credam, exigam, honores geram; turn demum 
lassam et plenam senectutem in otium referam. See, too, more than one of the 
Greek Epigrams expressing the same truth, that with all his heaping a man is not 
able farjs (Twpevcrai fxerpa ircpKra-Srepa, and this surely is what the Lord intends to 
affirm, Matt. vi. 27,— that no one can add to his term of life (^Ai/c/a). for while 
many would fain so add to their length of life, who ever wanted to add to his 
stature 1 and it is not merely a great addition, such as a cubit, which he could not 
make, but the smallest, not even an inch, which would naturally be the thing ex- 
pressed, if that were the meaning. 

■$. Vitringa (ErJclttr. d. Parab., p. 781) makes here an ingenious reference to 
1 Sam. xxv. 25, and observes that this rich fool is the Nabal of the New Testa- 
ment: "As his name is, so is he: Nabal is his name, and folly is with him." 
Compare ver. 36-38, then with this ver. 20 of our parable. 



THE EICH FOOL. 277 

telling him that the kingdom was departed from him. (Dan. iv. 31.) 
Here we are to suppose nothing of the kind, but more awful still, that 
while those secure deliberations which have been just described were 
going on in the thoughts of the man, this sentence was being determined 
in the counsels of God : # for it is thus that the Lord in heaven derides 
the counsels of sinners, seeing them in their vanity and folly, and know- 
ing how soon he will bring them to nothing. f Not as yet was there any 
direct communication between God and the man's soul — any message or 
warning concerning the near impending judgment, but even at the very 
moment when God was pronouncing the decree that the thread of his life 
should in a few moments be cut in twain, he was promising himself as 
confidently as ever the long spaces of an uninterrupted security. 

There is a force in the words, " shall be required of thee" (with which 
we may compare Wisd. xv. 8, " His life which was lent him shall be 
demanded,") a force which Theophylact well brings out : " For -ike piti- 
less exactors of tribute, terrible angels shall require thy soul from thee 
unwilling, and through love of life resisting. For from the righteous his 
soul is not required, but he commits it to God and the Father of spirits, 
pleased and rejoicing, nor finds it hard to lay it down, for the body lies 
upon it as a light burden. But the sinner who has enfleshed his soul, . 
and embodied it, and made it earthy, has prepared to render its divulsion 
from the body most hard : wherefore it is said to he required of him, as* 
a disobedient debtor, that is delivered to pitiless exactors. "J For he is 
not as a ship, which has been long waiting in harbor, and joyfully when 
the signal is given lifts its anchor, and makes sail for the harbor of eter- 
nity, but like the ship which by some fierce wind is dragged from its 
moorings, and driven furiously to perish on the rocks. The mere world- 
ling is torn from the world which is the only sphere of delight which he 
knows, as the fabled mandrake was torn from the earth, shrieking and 
with bleeding roots. § " Then ivhose shall those things be which thou host 
provided V Solomon long before had noted this as constituting part of 
the vanity of wealth, and the eager pursuit after wealth, namely, the un- 
certainty to whom after death it would come, and of the use which the 
heir would make of it (Eccles. ii. 18, 19), "Yea, I hated all my labor 

* God said to him this, in the words of Grotius, Non revelando sed decernendo. 

f This will come out yet more strongly if with the hest manuscripts we read not 
die vocative &<ppov, hut the nominative &<ppwu, Fool ! It is so in Lachmann's text. 

X So on the other side, the Jewish doctors taught that the angel Gabriel drew 
gently out with a kiss, the souls of the righteous from their mouths ; to something 
of which kind, the phrase so often used to express the peaceful departure of the 
laints, In osculo Domini obdormivit, must allude. 

() See Lucian's inimitable dialogue, the sixteenth (Cataplus), for a commentary, 
fa its way, on these words " shall be required" as well as on those which next follow. 



278 THE RICH FOOL. 

which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the man 
that shall be after me :,and who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man 
or a fool V Compare Ps. xxxix. 6, " He heapeth up riches, and know- 
eth not who shall gather them." (Eccles. ii. 26 ; Ps. xlix. 6-20 ; Job. 
xxvii. 16, 17.)* 

" So is he tliat layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward 
God" or, does not enrich himself toward God — for the two elauseS/Of 
the verse are parallel, and in the second not merely a state or condition, 
the being rich, but as in the first, an effort and endeavor, the making 
oneself rich, though in a manner altogether different, is assumed. Self 
and God are here contemplated as the two poles between which the soul 
is placed, for one or other of which it must determine, and then make 
that one the end of all its aims and efforts. If for the first, then the man 
" layeth up treasure for himself" and what the end of this is, we have 
seen ; the man and his treasure, so far at least as it is his treasure, 
come to nothing together. He has linked himself to the perishable in 
his inmost being, and he must perish with it. His very enriching of 
himself outwardly, while that is made the object of his being, is an 
impoverishing of himself inwardly, that is, toward God and in those 
which are the true riches ; for there is a continual draining off to 
worldly objects, of those affections which were given him that they 
tnight find their satisfying object in God ; where his treasure is, there 
his heart is also. Now the Scripture ever considers the heart as that 
which constitutes a man truly rich or poor. He that has no love of 
God, no large spiritual affections, no share in the unsearchable riches 
of Christ, no sympathies with his brethren, is in fact, " wretched and 
miserable, and poor and blind, and naked," and shall one day find out 
that he is so, however now he may say, " I am rich and increased with 
goods, and have need of nothing:" he is poor towards God, he has 
nothing with God ; he has laid up in store no good foundation against 
the time to come. On the other hand, he only is truly rich, who is 
rich toward God — who is rich in God — who has made the eternal and 
the unchangeable the object of his desires and his efforts. He in God 
possesses all things, though in this world he were a beggar, and for 
him to die will not be to quit, but to go to, his riches, f 

* So the Greek epigrammatist on the painful gatherer of wealth for others: 

O&tos b-Kola /xeAtco-a Tro\vrpr]Toi5 ivl <rlfxfi\ois 
Mox^cei, erepcav Spenrofjievow rh fxehi. 

f 1 cannot give better what seems to me the true view of the passage than in 
Cyprian's words addressed to the covetous {De Opcre et Elcem.) : Obsederunt ani- 
mum tuum sterilitatis tenebrre, et recedente inde lumine veritatis, carnale pectus 
alta et profunda avaritse caligo caecavit : pecuniae tua) captivus et servus es, . . 



THE RICH FOOL. 279 

Our Lord having thus warned his hearers against covetousness, and 
knowing how often it springs from a distrust in God's providential care, 
goes on to teach them where they may find that which shall be the best 
preservative against all such over anxious thoughts for the future, name- 
ly, in the assurance of the love and care of a heavenly Father (ver. 22- 
30), so that the connection is as close as it is beautiful, between this 
parable and the instructions which immediately follow. There is also, 
perhaps, in the words of ver. 24 a distinct reminiscence of the parable. 

servas pecuniam, quas te servata non servat, patrimonium cumulas, quod te pon- 
dere suo gravies onerat : nee meministi quid Deus responderit diviti exuberantium 
fructuum copiam stulta exultatione jactanti . . . Quid divitiis tuis solus frncubas 1 
qui in poenam tuam patrimonii tui pondus exaggeras ; ut quo locwpletior scscvlt 
fueris, pauperior Deojias? See Suicer's Thes. s. v. irAovTce. 



XX. 

THE BARREN FIG-TREE 

Luke xiii. 6-9. 

The eagerness of men to "be the first narrators of evil tidings, an 
eagerness which can only spring from a certain secret pleasure in 
them,* though that be most often unacknowledged even to themselves, 
was perhaps what moved some of those present to tell the Lord of a new 
outrage which Pilate had committed. These persons understood rightly 
that he was speaking, in the words which conclude the last chapter, of 
the severe judgments which men bring upon themselves through their 
sins : but, as is generally the manner of men, instead of applying these 
words to their own consciences, they made application of them only to 
others. Of ths outrage itself, — which however agrees well with the 
quarrel between Herod and Pilate (Luke xxiii. 12), and might have been 
either its cause or its consequence, — there is no historical notice. Fpr 
it is little probable that the scattering or slaying by Pilate of some 
fanatical Samaritan insurgents, recorded by Josephus, which is here ad- 
duced by some of the early commentators, is the event referred to ; and 
it is something too bold a change, as Lightfoot observes, to make rebel- 
ling Samaritans of these sacrificing G-alilaeans. Among the number- 
less atrocities with which the Romans exhausted the patience of the 
Jewish nation, and at length drove it into open resistance, it is nothing 
strange that this, which must have been but a drop of water in the sea, 
should have remained unrecorded. It is no more strange than that the 
slaughter of a few infants in a small country town like Bethlehem should 
find no place in profane history. The troublesome insurrectionary cha- 
racter for which the Galilaeans were noted,f may have been the motive 

* Two languages at least, bear melancholy witness to the existence of such a 
feeling, having a word to express this joy at calamities : — the German, Schaden- 
freude ; and the Greek, iirtxaipeKaKla. 

j* The Galilaeans are described by Josephus as industrious and brave ; but, 
though not in the least considered heretical like the Samaritans, by the other 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 281 

or excuse for this outrage, which must have been perpetrated at Jerusa- 
lem where alone sacrifices were offered. There is something significant 
in the language in which the slaughter of these Galilaeans is narrated, 
— " whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." It is proba- 
ble from our Lord's reply, that the narrators urged this circumstance, 
or at least would have had it understood, as a peculiar evidence of the 
anger of God against the sufferers. If men might have been safe any- 
where or at any time, it would have been at the altar of God, and while 
in the act of offering sacrifices unto him. But here, they probably 
meant to infer, just as Job's friends inferred some great guilt on his part 
from the greatness of his calamities, there must have been some hidden 
enormous guilt, which rendered the very sacrifices of these men to be 
sin, — not a propitiation of God, but a provocation, — so that they them- 
selves became piacular expiations, their blood mingling with, and itself 
becoming part of, the sacrifices which they offered. 

But whether exactly this was what they meant or not, the Lord at once 
laid bare the evil in their hearts, rebuking the cruel judgments which they 
certainly had formed concerning those that perished ; u Suppose ye that 
these Galilseans were sinners above all the Galilseans, because they suffered 
such things ?" He does not deny that they were sinners, justly obnoxious 
to this or any other severest visitation from God, but he does deny that 
their calamity marked them out as sinners above all other of their fellow- 
countrymen; and then he leads his hearers, as was ever his manner (see 
Luke xiii. 23 ; John xxi. 22), to take their eyes off from others, and to fix 
them upon themselves — " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 
Here, in these words, we are exactly taught how rightly to .use the ca- 
lamities which befall others ; what their significance is, as regards our- 
selves — that they are loud calls to an earnest repentance. For instead 
of exalting ourselves above and against the sufferers, as though we were 
more righteous than they, and on this account exempt from the like tri- 
bulations, we are on the contrary to recognize that whatever befalls an- 
other, might justly have befallen ourselves. So it will be ever felt by 
all who, not altogether ignorant of their own sinfulness, and of the holi- 
ness of God, apply any right measure to their own actual transgressions 

Jews; they were yet held in a certain degree of contempt hy them, partly "because 
their blood was considered less pure, many heathens being mingled among them, 
whence their country is called "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Matt. iv. 15; see 1 Mace. 
i. 15, ra\i\ata ak\o<pu\wv), — and partly because their faith was considered by the 
Jewish doctors as less strictly orthodox (John vii, 52; see i. 46 ; Acts ii. 7), they 
In many observances departing from the Jewish tradition. They spoke a bad 
dialect (Matt. xxvi. 73), characterized particularly by a confusion of gutturals, and 
a broad Syriac pronunciation, so as to give occasion to the strangest mistakes, and 
often to be unintelligible to a native of Jerusalem. (See LiGhtfoot's Chorograph, 
Cent., c. 86, 87. 



282 THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 

against the law of God. Moreover, when we have learned to see in 
ourselves the hitter root of sin, we shall learn to acknowledge that what- 
ever deadly fruit it bears in another, it might have borne the same or 
worse, under like circumstances, in ourselves. But when this is felt, it 
will be no longer possible to triumph over the doom of any sinner. The 
thoughts of a man thus taught to know himself will fall back on his own 
life and on his own heart. He will see in the chastisement which has 
overtaken another, the image of the chastisement which might justly 
have overtaken himself; he will see in it a message of warning addressed 
to himself. For he will not deny, as neither does our Lord here deny, 
the intimate connection between sin and suffering, but it is the sin of 
the race which is linked with the suffering of the race — not, of necessity 
at least, the sin of the individual with his particular suffering.* So 
far from denying this connection, the more the Christian conscience is 
developed in him, the more freely he will acknowledge it, the more close 
and intimate will it appear. At every new instance of moral and phy- 
sical evil which he encounters in a world which has departed from God, 
he will anew justify God as the Author of all good, even when he proves 
himself negatively such, in the misery of man as he is a sinful creature 
separated from his God, as well as positively in the blessedness of man 
as he is redeemed and re-united with himself. 

Our blessed Lord, to set the truth he would fain enforce yet more 
plainly before his hearers, himself brings forward another instance of a 



* Strauss {Leben Jesu, v. 2, pp. 84-90) terms the faith in a connection between 
sin and suffering, a " vulgar Hebrew notion," from which this passage might at 
first sight appear to clear the Lord, but which such other passages as Matt. ix. 2, 
John v. 14, lay again at his door, or that of his historians ; and says that this pas- 
sage and those are in contradiction to one another, and cannot be reconciled. He 
will not see, I know not whether in feigned or real blindness, that what Christ con- 
demns is this, the affirming that any man's particular calamity is the consequence 
of his particular sin. He affirms, all Scripture affirms, that the sum total of the 
calamity which oppresses the human race is the consequence of the sum total of 
its sin ; nor does he deny the relation in which a man's actual sins may stand to 
his sufferings. What he does deny is man's power to trace the connection, and 
therefore his right in any particular case, to assert such connection. And this, 
instead of being a " vulgar Hebrew notion," is one of the most deeply rooted con- 
victions in the universal human heart, witnessed for by the proverbs of all nations, 
inextricably entwined in all language — a truth which men may forget or deny in 
their prosperity, but which in the hour of calamity they are compelled to acknow- 
ledge—when this confession is ever extorted from them, Our sin hath found us 
out. Thus was it with Joseph's brethren ; in the hour of their own afflictions, 
they remembered their own sins: " "We are verily guilty concerning our brother, 
.... therefore is this distress come upon us." (Gen. xlii. 21 ; cf. 1 Kin. xvii. 18 ; 
Judg. i. 7 ; Acts xxviii. 4.) There are some excellent observations upon this sub- 
ject in Hengstenberg's Authcntie d. Pentateuches, v. 2, p. 577, seq. 



THE BARKEN FIG-TEEE. 283 

swift destruction overtaking many persons at once : — ' Those eighteen 
on whom the tower of Siloam* fell and slew them, think ye that they 
were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ?" Neither in this 
case were uncharitable judgments to find place, as though these were 
sinners above all men, as though they owed a larger debtf to God than 
others. But while none were to attribute a preponderance of guilt to 
those who perished, yet here also, in these accidents, in this disharmony 
of outward nature, all were to recognize a call to repentance, partly as 
these swift calamities should convince them of the uncertain tenure of 
life, and how soon therefore the day of grace might be closed for them ; 
but chiefly as awakening in them a sense of consciousness of sin. For 
the discords of outward nature, storms and floods, earthquakes and pes- 
tilences, and so too all disasters such as that one here referred to, are 
parts of that curse, that subjection of the whole creation to vanity, con- 
sequent on the sin of man. All were to speak to sinners in the same 
warning language, — " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 
There is a force in the original word (a><ravra>?), which our English K like- 
wise," from its frequent lax usage as a synonyme for " as well," fails 
to give. The threat is, that they shall literally in like ivise perish, in a 
manner similar to that in which these perished : for, as it has often been 
observed, the resemblance is more than accidental between these two 
calamities here adduced, and the ultimate destruction which did over- 
take the rebellious Jews, those who refused to obey the Lord's bidding, 
and to repent. As the tower of Siloam fell and crushed eighteen of the 
dwellers at Jerusalem, exactly so multitudes of its inhabitants were 
crushed beneath the ruins of their temple and their city ; and during 
the last siege and assault of that city, there were numbers also, who 
were pierced through by the Roman darts in the courts of the temple, 
in the very act of preparing their sacrifices, so that literally their blood, 
like that of these G-alilaeans, was mingled with their sacrifices, one blood 
with another. 

These two calamities then are adduced as slight foretastes of the 
doom prepared for the whole rebellious nation. If the warning was 
taken, if they would even now bring forth fruit meet for repentance, that 



* This tower was. from its name, probably in the immediate neighborhood of 
the fountain of Siloam, though Josephus {Bell. Jud., 6. 7, 2) would seem to distin- 
guish a region of Siloam from the fountain bearing that name. Though the 
notices of Siloam are so numerous, both in the Scriptures and in the Jewish 
historian, modern topographers are altogether at issue concerning its true posi- 
tion. 

f> Literally, " Think ye they were debtors above all men %" a remarkable phrase, 
selected for its peculiar fitness here, and with reference no doubt to chapter xii. 
68. 69. (Cf. Matt. v. 25 ; vi. 12 ; xviii. 24 ; Luke vii. 41.) 



284 THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 

dTtom might still be averted : but if not, if they refused to return, then 
these calamities would in the end be headed up by that one great and 
final catastrophe, which would leave no room for repentance. In the 
meanwhile they were to see in the fact that as yet the strokes descended 
upon them for warning, and not the stroke for excision, a proof of the 
long-suffering of God, not willing that any should perish : as Olshausen 
observes, — " the discourse of Jesus, severe and full of rebuke, is closed 
by a parable, in which the merciful Son of man again brings the side of 
grace prominently forward. He appears as the Intercessor for men before 
the righteousness of the heavenly Father, as he who obtains for them 
space for repentance. This idea of the deferring of the judgment of 
God, so to leave men opportunity to turn, runs through all the Holy 
Scripture ; before the deluge, a period of a hundred and twenty years 
was fixed (Gen. vi. 3) ; Abraham prayed for Sodom (Gen. xviii. 24) ; the 
destruction of Jerusalem did not follow till forty years after the ascension 
of the Lord ; and the coming again of Christ is put off though the 
patience of God (2 Pet. iii. 9)." 

This parable then is at once concerning the long-suffering and the 
■severity of God; it begins thus: "A certain man had a fig-tree 'plantea 
in his vineyard.'''' The vineyard here must be the world, and not, as in 
the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, the kingdom of God ; in the 
midst of the world the Jewish people were set and appointed that they 
should bear much fruit, that they should bring much glory to God. 
(Deut. iv. 6.) Yet though the parable was directly pointed at them, it 
is also of universal application ; for as Israel according to the flesh was 
the representative of all and of each, who in after times should be elected 
out of the world to the privileges of a nearer knowledge of God, so is 
a warning herein contained for the Gentile Church and for every indi- 
vidual soul.* Indeed there is personal application made of the image 
which supplies the groundwork of the parable, by the Baptist (Matt. iii. 
10), and of an image very nearly the same by Christ himself. (John xv. 
2.) — The possessor of the fig-tree u came and sought fruit thereon." 
What is here parabolically related was on another occasion typically 
done in a kind of sermo realis by the Saviour ; " seeing a fig-tree afar 
off, having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon." 
(Mark xi. 13.) But he then, as the master of the vineyard now, "found 



* Such application of it Ambrose makes (Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 171) : Quod de 
Jud«is dictum, omnibus cavendum arbitror. et nobis maxime ; ne fecundum 
Ecclcsias locum vacui meritis occupemus: qui quasi mclogranatabcncdicti. fructus 
ferre debemus internos, fructus pudoris, fructus conjunctionis, fructus mutuoe cari- 
atis et amoris, sub uno utcro Ecclesiae matris inclusi : ne aura noceat, ne grando 
lecutiat, ne aestus cupiditatis exurat, ne bumoris imber elidat. 



THE BARREL FIG-TREE. 285 

none." Long since the prophets had upbraided their people, and laid 
this charge against them, that though ordained to bring forth much fruil 
to the glory of God, they had fallen from their high calling, and brought 
forth either no fruit or bitter fruit. (Isai. v. 2, 7 ; Jer. xv., and, if oui 
version is to stand, Hos. x. 1.) 

There is a wonderful significance in the simple image running through 
the whole of Scripture, according to which men are compared to tree3, 
and their work to fruit* — the fruit being the organic produce and evi- 
dence of the inner life, not something arbitrarily attached or fastened on 
from without. (Ps. i. 3 ; Jer. xvii. 8 ; John xv. 2, 4, 5 ; Rom. vii. 4.) 
It is a comparison which helps greatly to set forth the true relation be- 
tween faith and works, which relation is, in fact, just as plainly declared 
by our Lord, when he says, "A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt 
fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (Luke vi. 43), 
as by St. Paul in any of his Epistles. There are three kinds of works 
spoken of in the New Testament, which may all be illustrated from this 
image : first, good works, when the tree, being made good, bears fruit of 
the same character ;f then dead works. J such as have a fair outward 
appearance, but are not the living outgrowth of the renewed man — fruit,, 
as it were attached and fastened on from without, alms given that they 
may be gloried in, prayers made that they may be seen, works such as 
were most of those of the Pharisees : and lastly, tricked works.§ when the 
corrupt tree bears fruit manifestly of its own kind. Here it is, of course, 
those good fruits which the tree is accused of not bearing : both the 
other kinds of fruit the Jewish nation abundantly bore. 

For "three years" the master of the vineyard complains that he had 
come seeking fruit, and in vain. Of these "three years" very many 
explanations have been offered. Augustine understands by them the 
times of the natural law, — of the written law, — and now, at last, of 
grace. Theophylact ; " Christ came thrice, by Moses, by the prophets, 
and thirdly, in his own person ;" or, when application of the parable is 



* Ben-gel on Matt. vii. 16 : Fructus est, quod homo, tanquam arbor, ex bona 
vel mala indole sua, omnes interiores facultates permeante, scaturit. Doctrina 
undecunque compilata et linguae alligata non est fructus : sed id omne quod doctor 
aliquis ex suo corde promit et profert, in sermone et actione, ceu quiddam ex in- 
tima sua constitutione fluens, ut lac quod mater praebet ex se. See an admirable 
sermon by Augustine (Am, 72) on the tree and its fruits, as setting forth the 
relation between a man and his works. 

t "Epya Seov (John vi. 28), Ka \a tpya (Tit ii. 7), ayaSa ipya (1 Tim ii. 10), tpy* 
wimms (1 Thess. i. 3). 

| "Epya veKpd (Heb. ix. 14), and sometimes tpya vSfiov (Gal. ii. 16). 

<> "Epya -Kov-qpa (1 John iii. 12). epya rod <tk6tovs (Rom. xiii. 12), rrjs vaprif (Gal 
T. 19). 



286 THE BARKEN FIG-TREE. 

made to the individual, — in childhood, in manhood, in old age. Olshau- 
sen thinks that they may refer to the three years of the Lord's open 
ministry upon earth ; but Grotius had already observed against this 
view, that if the three years are chronological, the one year more, which 
at the intercession of the dresser of the vineyard is granted to the tree, 
ought certainly to be chronological also, whereas not one, but forty years 
of grace were allowed to the Jews, before their final destruction. — " Cut 
it down" (see Isai. v. 5, 6; Matt. vii. 19; Luke xix. 41-44), "why* 
cumhereth it the ground 7" St. Basil beautifully observes the love which 
breathes even in the threatenings of God. u This," he says, u is peculiar 
to the clemency of God toward men, that he does not bring in punish- 
ment silently or secretly ; but by his threatenings first proclaims them 
to be at hand, thus inviting sinners to repentance." There is a blessed 
sense in which that word of the Greek proverb, " The feet of the avenging 
deities are shod with wool," to express the noiselessness of their approach, 
is not true. Before the hewing down begins, the axe is laid at the root 
of the tree (Matt. iii. 10), laid there, as prompt and at hand for immedi- 
ate use, though as yet no blow has been struck ; but laid there also, that 
if possible, this sign of what is threatened may avert the actual fulfil- 
ment of the threat.f (2 Chron. xxxiii. 10.) The "cumbering" J the 

* TTe have missed the " also " here {Ivari k a \ rr\v yrju Karapye?) ; which is 
really the key-word of the sentence : Wherefore should the tree stand, when, he- 
sides being itself harren, it also injures the soil in which it is set 1 The Vulgate 
has held it fast : Ut quid etiam terram occupat 1 and in De "Wette's German trans- 
lation: "Warum macht er auchnoch das Land unfruchtbar ? Gregory the Great 
{Horn. 81 in Evang.) shows that it had not escaped him : Postquam enim se per- 
didit, quserendum est cur et alios premat. And Bengel : ISTon modo nil prodest, 
sed etiam laticem avertit, quern e terra sucturae erant vites, et soles interpellat, et 
spatium occupat. 

f Augustine : Si damnare vellet, taceret. Nemo volens ferire dicit, Observa ; 
and Chrysostoni has the same thought (De Pasnit. Horn. 7, ad finem) : 'Airei\e? rfy 
rifxapiav 'tva (piytajxev r)f\v ire?pav rrjs rifiooptas ' (pofie? rw h.6yo3, 'iva /it] KoXaari tw epytp. 
We have a parallel, Heb. vi. 7, 8. The earth which beareth thorns and briers is 
there described as Kardpas eyyvs, but though thus "nigh unto cursing," the curse 
has not lighted on it yet; — it is foreannounced, that so it may not arrive. 

^ The word is not altogether adequate ; nor is it very easy to see what induced 
to its selection. It first appears in Tyndale's translation. In the Geneva, " "Why 
keepeth it the ground barren V takes its place, but it reappears in the authorized 
version. Doubtless the verb, to comber (cognate with the German kummern). had 
a stronger and more extensive sense in early English than it has retained in later 
use, but mainly the sense of harassing or annoying. Like the occupat of the Vul- 
gate, which is evidently too weak, it fails to give us the Karapye? (=apy6v, or aepy6v 
rroiel) of the original. Impedit, which appears to have been in the old Italic, is 
better, for the tree is charged not merely with being negatively, but positively 
evil; it marred and mischiefed the soil beneath and around it. Gregory the 
Great : Stat desuper arbor infructuosa, et subtus terra sterilis jacet, Infructuosae 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 287 

ground implies something more than that it occupied the place which 
might have been filled by another and a fruit-bearing tree ; the barren 
tree injured the land, spreading injurious shade, and drawing off to itself 
the fatness and nourishment which should have gone to the trees that 
would have made a return. Thus, like this fig-tree, the Jewish Church 
not merely did not itself bring forth fruits of righteousness, but it 
injured the ground in which it was planted. Through them the name 
of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles (Rom. ii. 24) ; they hindered 
the spread of the knowledge of God among other nations, through the 
mischievous influences of their pride and hypocrisy (Matt, xxiii. 13. 15) ; 
even as it is true of every individual sinner, that he is not merely unprofit- 
able to God, but has a mischievous influence ; by his evil example, by his 
corrupt maxims, he is a hindrance and a stumbling-block to others in the 
way of their attainment of salvation. 

The dresser of the vineyard, who pleads for the tree, and would, if it 
might be. avert its doom, saying, " Lord, let it alone this year also" is 
manifestly the Son of God himself, the Intercessor for men (Job xxxiii. 
23 ; Zech. i. 12 ; Heb. vii. 25) ; yet not as though the Father and the 
Son had different minds concerning sinners, — as though the counsels of 
the Father were wrath, and of the Son, mercy ; for righteousness and 
love are not qualities in him, who is Righteousness and who is Love ; — 
they cannot, therefore, be set one against the other, since they are his 
essential being. Yet, on the other hand, we must not, while escaping 
this error, fall into the opposite, letting go the reality of God's wrath 
against sin, — the reality of the sacrifice of Christ, not merely on the side 
with which it looks towards men, but also on the side with which it looks 
towards God ; the death of Christ was really a propitiation of God, not 
merely an assurance of God's love towards sinners. The way of escape 
from both these errors is shown to us in those words : " the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world" (Rev. xiii. 8); "foreordained before 
the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. i. 20). The sacrifice, though of 
necessity outwardly brought to pass in time, " now manifest in these last 
times for you," yet took place in the purpose of him who oflered, and of 



arboris desuper umbra densatur, et solis radius ad terram descendere nequaquam 
permittitur. Corn, a Lapide ; Terram inertem et sterilem reddit, turn umbra sua 
turn radicibus suis, quibus succum terrse vicinis vitibus eripit et praeripit. Even 
io we have in Shakspeare :— 

" The noisome weeds that without profit suck 
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers." 

The word Karapye?v is a very favorite one with St. Paul, occurring no less than 
twenty-six times in his Epistles ; and only here besides in the N. T. We have 
kpryovs and aKoipirovs joined together, 2 Pet. i. 8. See Suicer's Thes., s. v. 



288 THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 

liim who accepted it, before all time, or rather, out of time ; so that we 
must not conceive of man as ever not contemplated by God in Christ : 
there was no change in God's mind concerning the sinner,* because he 
who beholdeth the end from the beginning, had beheld him from the first 
as reconciled and re-constituted in his Son. (Rom. xvi. 25, 26.) In 
this view we may consider the high priestly intercession of Christ as 
having found place and been effectual even before he passed from earth 
into the heavens, — before he had carried his own blood into the truly 
Holy of holies :f for to that intercession all the long-suffering of God 
toward sinners is to be referred ; — " The earth and all the inhabitants 
thereof are dissolved ; I bear up the pillars of it." (Ps. lxxv. 3.) Some 
of the Fathers see here allusion also to the intercessory work, which the 
Church, in its healthy members, is ever carrying forward on behalf of 
its sick members, or that of the Church for the world.J No doubt such 
intercession is always going forward, and has a real worth before God 
(Gen. xviii. 23-33; Exod. xxxii. 11 ; Job xlii. 8; 1 Sam. xii. 19, 23; 2 
Kin. xix. 24; Jer. xv. 1 ; 1 Tim. ii. 1-4; Jam. v. 14-18; 1 John v. 16), 
and such need not here be of necessity excluded ; but at the same time, 
it seems simpler and more satisfactory, with Theophylact and others, to 
refer this primarily to that one Intercessor, on whose intercession that 
of all others must ultimately rest. It is plain, too, that he must be 
meant, for the pleader now is the same who but for this pleading should 
have executed the sentence. But to him only, to whom all judgment is 
committed, could the command have been given, " Cut it down." Cer- 
tainly it would not have been given to men ; for if to any beside him, it 
must have been to the angels. (Matt. xiii. 29, 30.) 

As he pleads for men, not with the purpose that they may continue 
in their sins with impunity, but obtains that their sentence may for a 
while be suspended to see if they will turn and repent, so the vine- 
dresser here pleads for the barren tree, not that it may be suffered to 
stand for ever, though it continue in barrenness (for on the contrary he 
consents to its doom, if it thus continue unfruitful, as a doom righteous 



* Augustine (Serm. 254, c. 2) : Interpellat misericors miser icordem. Qui enim 
se volebat exhibere misericordem, ipse sibi opposuit intercessorum. 

f Cocceius and his followers, as is well known, laid much stress on the distinc- 
tion between the irdpe<ris (Rom iii. 25) and the &<pe<ris a/jLapnuv. The first, the 
pretermission of sins through the forbearance of God, they said was what the Son 
obtained for men till he had actually come in the flesh, and then ensued the &/>e<m, 
or entire remission, the last going along with the gift of regeneration, exclusively 
the prerogative of the New Covenant. 

X As Augustine {Serm. 110, c. 1) : Qui intercedit colonus est omnis sanctus, qui 
Intra Ecclesiam orat pro iis qui sunt extra Ecclesiam. 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 289 

and good) ; # but lie asks for it one year of grace, to see if it will yet do 
better : " If it bear fruit. well;\ and if not, then after that thou shalt 
cut it dotvnP During this year lie " lie will dig about it and dung it:" 
that is, he will hollow out the earth from around the stem of the tree, 
and afterwards fill up the hollow with manure ; as one may often see 
done now to the orange-trees in the south of Italy. J By these appliances 
is signified that multiplication of the means of grace, which in God's 
dealing with men, we may so often observe to find place at the last mo- 
ment, — before those means are withdrawn for ever. Thus, before the 
flood, they had Noah, a " preacher of righteousness," — before the great 
catastrophes of the Jews, they had among them some of their most emi- 
nent prophets, as Jeremiah before the taking of Jerusalem by the Chal- 
dseans, — and before its final destruction, they enjoyed the ministry of 
Christ and of his apostles. To this last, no doubt, allusion is here more 
immediately made, to that larger, richer supply of ^race, — that freer out- 
pouring of the Spirit, which was consequent on the death, and resurrec- 
tion, and ascension, of the Lord. So Theophylact explains this digging 
about and manuring the hitherto unfruitful tree : " Though they were 
not made better by the law and the prophets, nor yielded fruit of repent- 
ance, yet will I water them by my doctrines and passion ; it may be, 
they will then yield fruits of obedience." No doubt if the history of 
men's lives were writ as large as the history of nations and of churches, 
and could we, therefore, read the history of those as plainly as of these, 
we should oftener perceive that what is true of the last is also true of 
the first : we should mark critical moments in men's lives to which all 
the future was linked, on which it was made altogether to depend, — 
times of gracious visitation which it was of the deepest importance to 
know, and not to suffer to escape unobserved and unimproved. Such a 
time of visitation to the Jewish people was the Lord's ministry in the 
midst of it (Luke xix. 42) ; then was the digging about and manuring 
the tree which had been so long barren. But it abode in its barrenness, 
— its day of grace came to an end ; and, as here is threatened, it was 
inexorably cut down. We may observe, however, that in the parable our 
Lord does not actually affirm that the tree will certainly continue un- 
fruitful to the last, but suggests the other alternative as possible ; " If 



* With a play on the words, Augustine (Serm. 110, c. 4) : Dilata est securis, 
noli esse secura; and elsewhere, Distulit sccurim, non dedit securitatem. 

t "We have the same suspended sense, with e5, or some word similar, understood, 
Lnke xxii. 42. 

X For a useful spiritual application of the words, see Augustine, Serm. 254 and 
110, c 1 : Sordes cultoris, dolores sunt peccatoris. Cf. Ambrose, De Pcenit, 1. 2, 
c. 1. 

19 



290 THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 

it bear fruit, well" For thus the door of repentance is left open to all; 
they are warned that they are not shut up, except indeed by their own 
evil will, in unbelief and hardness of heart,* that it is they only them- 
selves who make inevitable their doom. 

* Rosenmiiller CAUe und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 187) quotes from an Arabian 
writer the following receipt for curing a palm-tree of barrenness. " Thou must 
take a hatchet, and go to the tree with a friend, unto whom thou sayest, I will cut 
down this tree, for it is unfruitful. He answers, Do not so, this year it will cer- 
tainly bear fruit. But the other says, It must needs be, — it must be hewn down ; 
and gives the stem of the tree three blows with the back of the hatchet. But the 
other restrains him, crying, Nay, do it not, thou wilt certainly have fruit from it 
this year, only have patience with it, and be not over-hasty in cutting it down ; if it 
still refuses to bear fruit, then cut it down. Then will the tree that year be cer- 
tainly fruitful and bear abundantly." The same story is to be found in Ruckert's 
Brahmanische Erzahlungen, so that it would appear widely si>read in the East; also 
in S. de Sacy's Chrest. Arabe, v. 2, p. 379 ; and in the colk *t^ <# tracts De Rt 
Rustica, entitled Geoponica. 



XXI. 

'/HE GREAT SUPPER. 

Luke xiv. 15-24. 

It is not worth while to repeat the arguments which seem to prove 
beyond the 3b.adow of a doubt, that this parable, and that recorded at 
Matt. xxii. 2, are entirely different, spoken upon different occasions, 
and with (partially) different aims. On the present occasion, the Lord 
had been invited to eat bread at the house of one of the chief of the 
Pharisees. (Yer. 1.) Much happened at this meal, which was proba- 
bly no common meal, but an entertainment prepared with much cost and 
expense, and at which many, and it is likely, guests of consideration, were 
present. This would seem probable for many reasons ; there were con- 
tests among the guests for precedency, or at least a silent, but not un- 
observed or unrebuked, attempt on the part of some to select for them- 
selves the places of honor and dignity.* (Yer. 7.) Then again, in 
the Lord's address to his host, in which he points out to him a more ex- 
cellent way of hospitality (ver. 12), it would seem implied that at that 
feast were present' many of his kindred and richer neighbors — such a 
supposition adds much force to the admonishment. And yet further, 
our Saviour so often borrowed the images of his parables from that which 
was actually at the moment present before his eyes and the eyes of his 
hearers — that his speaking of a certain man having made a great supper, 
would seem to indicate that this also at which he was now sitting was 
no ordinary, but rather some costly and numerously attended enter- 
tainment. 

The circumstances out of which the parable immediately grew were 
these : one that sat at the table with him, after hearing some of the gra- 
cious words that proceeded out of his mouth, could not help exclaiming, 

* This snatching at the first places is adduced by Theophrastus {Char. 21) as 
an example of the /it/cpo^Atm/i/o. See also Becker's Charikles, v. 1, p. 427. 



292 THE GREAT SUPPER. 

certainly not in the spirit of mockery, rather in approval and admira« 
tion, " Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God !" But 
how, it may be asked, came the Lord's last words, " Thou shalt bo 
recompensed at the resurrection of the just," to elicit exactly this obser- 
vation ? what natural connection was there between the two, for such a 
connection is evidently marked in the narrative ? When we keep in 
mind the notions then current among the Jews concerning the resurrec- 
tion of the just, or, which was the same thing, the open setting up of the 
kingdom of God, — that it would be ushered in by a great and glorious 
festival,* of which all the members of that kingdom should be partakers, 
it is at once easy to perceive how this man's thoughts, a man it might be 
with certain favorable dispositions towards the truth, but of a carnal 
mind like the most of his countrymen, should have passed on from the 
resurrection of the just, of which Jesus spake, to the great festival which 
was to accompany that resurrection, or rather, should have interpreted 
the Lord's words, when he spake of the recompense that would then be 
given to the merciful, as meaning participation in that festival. His 
exclamation, " Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God !" 
might be unfolded thus ; u Blessed is he that shall share in the recom- 
pense whereof thou speakest, in the reward which shall be given 
at the resurrection of the just." His words are an earthly way of say- 
ing, " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection !" It 
is likely from the warning conveyed in the parable, which we are told 
was particularly, though we cannot suppose exclusively, addressed to 
him, that he spoke these words with a very easy and comfortable assur- 
ance that he should make one of those that should thus eat bread in the 
kingdom of God. He, as a Jew, as a member of the elect nation, had 
been invited to that great feast of God ; that was all which he paused to 
consider ; and not whether he had truly accepted the call, or, on the 
contrary, had suffered carnal desires and lusts to keep him away from 
rightly embracing it ; certainly he had not at all considered whether in 
the refusal to enter into that higher spiritual life of the Gospel, to which 
Christ was now inviting him. there was not involved his own ultimate 
rejection from the heavenly festival. f For his warning, and for the 
warning of all like-minded with him, the parable was spoken. 

u A certain man made a great supper?'' Many have said, " a supper" 
because as a supper takes place at evening, so it was in the evening of 



* See Eisenmenger's Entdeckt. Judenthum, v. 2, p. 872, seq. — Augustine warn- 
ing against a carnal interpretation, exclaims concerning this supper : Noli parare 
fauces, sed cor. 

f Augustine (Serm. 112, c. 5) : Quasi in longinqua iste suspirabat, et ipse Panis 
ante ilium discumbebat. 



THE GREAT SUPPER. 293 

time, the last hour (1 John ii. 18; 1 Cor. x. 11), that Christ came, and 
invited men to the fulness of Gospel blessings. But this is pressing the 
word of the original* too far, which is of very wide and fluctuating use : 
a great feast, and nothing more, is signified. Men's relish is so little, 
their desire so faint for the things heavenly, therefore are they present- 
ed to them under such inviting images as this, that if possible they may 
be stirred up to a more earnest longing after them.f — '-''And bade\ 
many" — these were "the Jews, and the latter parts of the parable oblige 
us to understand by those bidden, not so much the entire nation, as those 
who might be taken for the peculiar representatives of the theocracy, 
the priests and the elders, the scribes and the Pharisees, in opposition to 
the publicans and sinners, and all the despised portions of the people. 
Those other as claiming to be zealous for the law, to be following after 
righteousness, seemed as it were to be pointed out as the first who 
should embrace the invitation of Christ. The maker of the feast " sent 
his servant at supper-time, to say to them that tvere ridden. Come, for all 
things are now ready" Some will have that the guests, in needing thus 
to be reminded that the hour of supper had arrived, already began to 
show how slightly they esteemed the invitation ; but this is a mistake, 

* Ae?7nw, which, as is well known, originally, — at least in the time of Homer, 
— meant the morning, in opposition to the evening, meal, and as little indicates 
the time when the meal was made as does the Latin coena. Or even granting that 
Id-Kvov in the later Greek of the New Testament had come to signify the evening 
meal, yet still its being the chief and most important meal in the day, was naturally 
what caused it here to be selected, and not the accidental circumstance of its 
being celebrated towards evening. 

f A sermon by Gregory the Great {Horn. 36 in Evang.) on this parable begins 
beautifully thus : Hoc distare inter delicias corporis et cordis solet, quod corporales 
deliciae cum non habentur. grave in se desiderium accendunt ; cum vero habitse 
eduntur, comedentem protinus in fastidium vertunt. At contra spiritales delicias, 
cum non habentur, in fastidio sunt : cum vero habentur, in desiderio ; tantoque a 
comedente amplius esuriuntur, quanto et ab esuriente amplius comeduntur. In 
illis appetitus placet, experientia displicet ; in istis appetitus vilis est, et experientia 
magis placet. 

% KaAeiv, like the Latin vocare, is the technical word for the inviting to a festi- 
val. (Matt. xxii. 3 ; John ii. 2 ; 1 Cor. x. 27.) It is also the word which St. Paul 
uses to express the union of an outward word bidding, and an inward Spirit draw- 
ing, whereby God seeks to bring men into his kingdom. The answering word in 
St. John is i\Kveiv (vi. 44 ; xii. 32). They have both their peculiar fitness, in that 
both express how the power brought to bear on man's will is a moral power, and 
man a moral being, capable, though called, of not coming, if he chooses. — of resist- 
ing the attraction that would draw him, if he will. This attraction or bidding, out- 
ward by fheTVord, inward by the Spirit, is the k\tj<tis ayta (2 Tim. i. 9), kAtjc-js rot 
©eoS (Rom. xi. 29), K\ri<ns iirovpavlos (Heb. iii. 1), rj &vw n\ri<ris (Phil. iii. 14), — 
which last is not the calling to a height, but the calling from a height ; not, as we 
have it, the "high calling," but "the calling from on high." 



294 THE GREAT SUPPER. 

as it has been already observed that such was the usual custom ; and 
their contempt of the honor done them, and their neglect of their word 
given, — for we must suppose they had accepted the invitation before, — ■ 
is first testified by their excuses for not appearing at the festival. — There 
was, beyond a doubt, in the world's history a time, when more than any 
other it might be said " all things are now ready" a fulness of time,* 
which, when it was arrived, and not till then, the kingdom of heaven 
was set up, and men invited, the Jew first, and afterwards the Gentile, 
to enter into it. The servant who is sent to bid the guests is not, as 
Theophylact assumes, our blessed Saviour himself, who " took the form 
of a servant," and might therefore be aptly represented under this name. 
Nor yet can we include under this single servant, the prophets of the 
old covenant, for it is not till " all things are now ready 11 that this ser- 
vant is sent forth. He represents then not the heralds who went before 
the king, but those who accompanied him, preachers, evangelists, and 
apostles, all who, reminding the Jews of the prophecies that went before 
concerning the coming kingdom of God and their share in that king- 
dom,! bade them now enter on the enjoyment of those good things, which 
were no longer good things in the distance, but now actually present. 

" And tliey all with one consent" % (or, out of one mind or spirit) 
" began to make excuse"^ "Whether there is any essential difference 
between the excuse which the first guest offers, and that offered by the 
second, whether by these are represented hindrances different in their 
nature and character which keep back different men from Christ, or that 
both would alike teach us the same general lesson, that the love of the 
world takes away from men a desire after and a relish for heavenly 
things, it is not easy to determine. I should imagine there was a dif- 
ference, as I have already incidentally suggested, in speaking of the 
cognate parable in St. Matthew. Perhaps the first who said, " I have 
bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it" repre- 

* Theophylact has here a remarkable comparison ; he has remarked the height 
to which the wickedness of the world had reached at the time of the Saviour's 
coming, and goes on : "Clffirep yap vScrrifxa virovXov ical KaKSrj&es kuariv, ol iarpol iravra. 
rhv irovqpbv x v f^> v iKprj^at, elfr' ovtws ras (papixaneias iirdyovcri}/, ovtws kclL tV afxapriay 
eSet irdi/ra ra ot/ce?a eavrrjs eiSyj iTridel£a(T&ai, elra rhv /xeyav larpbv im^e7uat rh 
<pdpfxaKov. 

f Augustine : Qui sunt invitati, nisi per prsemissos vocati prophetas'? 

X Tvd>/xr]s, naptilas, or some similar word, must be supplied ; and such, as mark- 
ing the oneness of spirit out of which all the refusals proceeded, would, I think, 
be better than <powrjs, which some propose. 

<) UapaireTcr^ai is used for recusare and excusare ; for the first, Acts xxv. 11 ; for 
the second at ver. 19 of this parable, where ex 6 /* e tro.pr\T-r\it.ivov is rather a Latin 
phrase (habeas me excusatum) than a Greek one. 'Eiraivelv rrjv icXrjatv would be 
the more classic phrase for declining an invitation. 



THE GREAT SUPPER. - 295 

sents those who are elate of heart through acquired possessions. He is 
going to see his ground, not exactly in the spirit of Ahab when he visit- 
ed the vineyard which he had taken by violence, for there is no guilt 
of the sort, and it makes much for the earnestness of the warning con- 
veyed in the parable, that there is no such attributed to any of the 
guests, that none are kept away by any occupation in itself sinful — and 
yet all become sinful, because they are allowed to interfere with higher 
objects, because the first place, instead of a place merely subordinate, 
is given to them. But he is going to see his possession that he may 
glory in it, as Nebuchadnezzar gloried when he walked in his palace 
and said, " Is not this great Babylon that I have built ... by the might 
of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" (Dan. iv. 30.) 
While in him then it is "the lust of the eye and the pride of life" 
which are indicated as the things keeping him from Christ, with the 
second guest it is rather the care and anxiety of business which fill 
his soul ; he has made an important purchase, and cannot put off for a 
single day the trial of how it is likely to turn out ;* " I have bought 
five] yoke of oze?i, and I go to prove them." He is one who is getting 
what the other has already got. 

If in these two it is the pride and the business, in the last it is the 
pleasure, of the world that keeps him from Christ. " See you not that 
I have a feast of my own 1 why trouble me then with yours 1 I liave, 
married a ivife, a?id tJierefore I cannot come."% The other two, even 
while they plead their excuses, are themselves conscious that they are* 
hardly valid, so that they add out of a sense of this their insufficiency, 
" I pray thee have me excused." But this one accounts that he has a rea- 
son perfectly good, why he should not attend, and troubles not himself, 
therefore, to make a courteous denial, but bluntly refuses. § As there 
was an ascending scale of contumacy in the bearing of the guests in the 
other parable (Matt, xxii.), some making light of the message, others 

* So Augustine (Serm. 112, c. 2): In villa, empta, dominatio notatur; ergo su- 
perbia castigatur, vitium malum, vitium primum. His mystical explana- 
tion of the things which kept away the second guest is less satisfactory, hut this is 
as true as beautiful : Amor rerum terrenarum, viscum est spiritalium pennarum. 
Ecce concupisti, haesisti. Quis tibi dabit pennas, ut columbae, quando volabis ubi 
vere requiescas, quando hie ubi male haesisti, perverse requiescere voluisti 1 Cf. 
Enarr. in Ps. exxxviii. 10. 

■f The number need not perplex us, as Elijah (1 Kin. xix. 19) found Elisha 
ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke 
would be nearly useless, the trial of the oxen was very needful, and was probably 
to find place before the purchase was finally concluded. 

| On the same grounds Croesus would excuse his son from the great hunting 
party (Herod. 1. 1, C. 36) : Ne6yafj.6s re yap ecm, na\ ravri ol vvv fieAei. 

§ Bengel : Hie excusator, qu6 speciosiorem et hones forem videtur habere can- 
8am, eo est ceteris importunior. 



296 " THE GREAT SUPPER. 

killing the messengers, so is it here. It is true that in none does tha 
evil grow to such an enormous height as there, yet still is there this 
same ascending scale. The first would be very glad to come, if only it 
were possible, if there were not a constraining necessity keeping him 
away. It is a-needs be, so at least he describes it, so he would have it 
no doubt represented to the maker of the feast. The second alleges no 
such constraining necessity, but is simply going upon sumcient reason 
in another direction ; yet he too, at the same time, prays to be excused. 
The third has plans of his own, and says outright u I cannot come.'''' 
According to the Levitical law, this reason of his would have been a 
sumcient one why he should not have gone to the battle (Deut. xxiv. 5), 
but it is none why he 'should not come to the feast.* 

In what remarkable connection do the words, put into the mouth of 
the guests, stand with the declaration of the Saviour which presently after 
follows, u If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, 
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life 
also, he cannot be my disciple ;"f and how apt a commentary on the 
parable is supplied- by the words of St. Paul, " This I say, brethren, the 
time is short ; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though 
they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they 
that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they 
possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it" (1 Cor. 
vii. 29-31), since it was not the having — for they had nothing which it 
was not lawful for men to have — but the unduly loving these things, 
which proved their hindrance, and ultimately excluded them from the 
feast. 

The servant returns and declares to his lord the ill success which he 
has met — how all have excused themselves from coming — even as hitherto 
it is probable that in no single instance had any one of the spiritual 
chiefs of the Jewish nation attached himself openly, and without reserve, 
to Christ, so that they could say, " Have any of the rulers or of the Phari- 
sees believed on him?" (John vii. 48.) " Then\ the master of tlu 
'house being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and 
lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the 
halt, and the blind?'' In these words there would seem a distinct remi- 

* Gerhard gives well the three hindrances in thiee words, Dignitates, opes, vo- 
luptates ; and in the old monkish rhymes there is evidently an interpretation of 
them intended, something similar to that given above : 

Uxor, villa, boves, coenam clausere vocatis ; 
Mundus, cura, caro coelum clausere renatis. 

f Of all the excuses made by the invited guests, Bengel well says : His omnibui 
mederi poterat sanctum illud odium, ver. 26. 
X Ambrose : Post divitum resupina fastidia. 



THE GREAT SUPPER. 297 

niscence of the precept which Christ just before had given to him at 
whose table he was sitting ; " Call thou the poor, the maimed, the lame, 
the blind." (Yer. 13.) He would encourage him to this by showing 
him that it is even thus with the great Giver of the heavenly feast. He 
calls the spiritually sick, the spiritually needy ; while the rich in their 
own virtues, in their own merits, at once exclude themselves and are ex- 
cluded by him, he calls these poor to sit down at his table. The people 
who knew not the law, and whom the Pharisees accounted cursed — the 
despised and outcasts of the nation, the publicans and sinners, they should 
enter into the kingdom of God, before the great, the wise, the proud, — • 
before those who said they saw, — before those who thanked God they 
were not as other men, — before those who counted that they had need 
of nothing. 

Hitherto the parable has been historic, now it passes on to be pro- 
phetic, for it declares how God had a larger purpose of grace than could 
be satisfied by the coming in of a part and remnant of the Jewish peo- 
ple, — that he had prepared a feast, at which more shall sit down than 
they, — that he has founded a Church, in which there would be room for 
Gentile as well as Jew, — that those, too, should be " fellow-citizens with 
the saints, and of the household of God." It is not that this is explicitly 
declared in the parable, for the time was not yet for unfolding plainly the 
great mystery of the calling of the Gentiles ; but it lay wrapt up therein, 
and, like so much else in Scripture, biding its time. The servant 
returning from the accomplishing of his second mission had said, "Lord, 
it is clone as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room" — whereupon, 
since grace will endure a vacuum as little as nature,* he receives a new 
commission, " Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to 
come in, that my house may be filled." If those in the streets and the 
lanes oftlie city are the most abject of the Jews, the meaner, the more 
ignorant, the more sinful, then those without the city — which city will 
here bo the symbol of the theocracy — those in the country round, those 
wandering in the highways and camping, as Gipsies now-a-days, under 
the hedges, will be the yet more despised, and yet more morally abject 
Gentiles, the paga?is in all senses of the word. 

Concerning these the master says, " Compel them to come in" It is 
strange how any argument for a compulsion, save indeed a moral one, 
should ever have been here drawn from these words. In the first place, 
in the letter of the parable to suppose any other compulsion, save that 
of earnest persuasion, is absurd ; for how can we imagine this single ser- 
vant — for he is but one throughout — driving before him, and that from 
the country into the city, a flock of unwilling guests, and these, too, 
gathered from those rude and lawless men unto whom he is now sent 

* Bengel : Nee natura nee gratia patitur vacuum. 



298 THE GREAT SUPPER. 

The words imply, not that the giver of the feast assumed there would 
be, on their part, any reluctance to accept the invitation which should 
need to be overcome, any indifference toward it, but exactly the contrary. 
It was rather that these houseless dwellers in the highways, and by the 
hedges, would hold themselves so unworthy of the invitation as scarcely 
to believe it was intended for them, scarcely to be induced — without 
earnest persuasion, without the application of something almost like 
force — to enter the rich man's dwelling, and share in his magnificent 
entertainment. And when we pass on to the spiritual thing signified, 
'since faith cannot be compelled, what can this compelling men to come 
in mean,* save that strong, earnest exhortation, which the ambassadors 
of Christ will address to men, when they are themselves deeply con- 
vinced of the importance of the message which they bear, and the mighty 
issues which there are for every man, linked with his acceptance or 
rejection of that- message of the Gospel? If they "compel" it will be as 
did the angels, who, when Lot lingered, laid hold upon his hand and 
brought him forth, and set him without the city of destruction (Gen. 
xix. 16) ; or the ambassadors of Christ will, in another way, compel men 
to come in, for they will speak as delivering the words of him who has a* 
right to be heard by his creatures, — who not merely entreats, but com- 
mands, all men, every where, to repent and believe the Gospel. Anselm 
observes, that God may be also said to compel men to come in, when he 
drives them by strong calamities to seek and find refuge with him and 
in his Church ;f or as Luther explains it, they are compelled to come in 
when the law is broadly preached, terrifying their consciences, and 
driving them to Christ, as their only refuge and hope. 

The parable closes with the householder's indignant declaration, 
" For I say unto you.% that none of those men § that were bidden shall taste 

* Even Maldonatus explains it thus : Sinners, he says, are to be adeo rogandos, 
adeo invitandos, ut quodammodd compelli videantur; and Bengel says excellently: 
Non est omnimoda coactio .... Aliter compulit Saulus pro Judaismo insaniens, 
aliter Paulus servus Jesu Christi. See on the other hand this phrase adduced 
and used by Augustine, as justifying a certain degree of constraint for the bringing 
men into the outward unity of the Church, Ep. 50, De moder. coerc. HcereL, and 
Serm. 112, c. 7, where he says, Foris inveniatur necessitas, nascitur intus voluntas ; 
and compare De Unit. Eccles., c. 20, and Bernard, De Grat. et Lib. Arb., c. 11. 
I -f So, too, Gregory the Great {Horn. 36 in Evang.) : Qui ergo hujus mundi ad- 
versitatibus fracti ad Dei amorem redeunt, compelluntur ut intrent. 

£ The plural vjxlv is perplexing, only one servant having been named through- 
out. Is it that that one is considered as the representative of many 1 or that this 
declaration is made in the presence of the whole household'? or, as Bengel explains 
it, of such guests as were already by the first vocation assembled 1 Plurale perti- 
net ad introductos pauperes. It cannot be that Christ is now speaking in his own 
person to the Pharisees round him, for the words must plainly be regarded not as 
his words, but as the conclusion of the parable, and spoken by the householder. 

$ It is worth while observing that it is avdpwv not avfrpwiruv here, which of itsell 



THE GREAT SUPPER. 299 

of my supper." Final exclusion from the feast, to which, when they 
saw others partaking, they might wish to regain admission on the plea of 
their former invitation, — this is the penalty with which he threatens 
them ; — he declares they have forfeited their share in it, and for ever ; 
that no after earnestness in claiming admission shall profit them now. 
(Prov. i. 28; Matt. xxv. 11, 12.) 

It is worth while to compare this parable and that of the Marriage 
of the King's Son, for the purpose of observing with how fine a skill all 
the minor circumstances are arranged in each, to be in perfectly consistent 
keeping. The master of the house here does not assume, as he does not- 
possess, power to avenge the insult ; even as the offence committed is 
both much lighter in itself, and lighter in the person against whom it 
is committed, than the offence which is so severely punished in the paral- 
lel narration. There the principal person, being a king, has armies at 
his command, as he has also whole bands of servants, and not merely a 
single one, to send forth with his commands. The refusal to accept his 
invitation, was, in fact, according to Eastern notions of submission, 
nothing less than rebellion, and being accompanied with outrages done 
to his servants, called out that terrible retribution. Here, as the offence 
is in every way lighter, so also is the penalty, — that is, in the outward 
circumstance which supplies the groundwork of the parable, since it is 
merely exclusion from a festival ; though we should remember it is not 
lighter, when taken in its spiritual signification ; for it is nothing less 
than exclusion from the kingdom of God, and from all the blessings of 
the communion of Christ, and that exclusion implies K everlasting de- 
struction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." 

brings this verse into interesting relation, as indeed the whole parable suggests the 
parallel, with 1 Cor. i. 26-29. 



XXII. 
THE LOST SHEEP. 

Matthew xviii. 12-14 ; Luke xv. 3-7. 

When St. Luke says, " Then drew near to the Lord all the publican 
and sinners for to hear him," this does not imply that all who were at 
some particular moment in a certain neighborhood drew near with thi? 
purpose ; but the Evangelist is rather giving the prevailing feature in 
the whole of Christ's ministry, or at least in one epoch of it — that it was 
such a ministry as to draw all the outcasts of the nation, the rejected of 
the scribes and Pharisees, round him — that there was a secret attraction 
in his person, in his Word, which drew all of them habitually to him for 
to hear him.* Of these '-'publicans and sinners" the first were men 
infamous among their countrymen by their very occupation! — the second, 

* We find this indicated in the words, ricav iyyl(oj/Tes, which here find place, 
instead of the simpler imperfect: They were in the habit of drawing nigh. Grotius 
rightly : Actum continuum et quotidianum genus hoc loquendi significat. And he 
compares Luke iv. 31 ; to which he might hare added Mark ii. 18, and other 
examples. 

f TeXuvai (o7rb rod re\os uveTa&ai) were of two kinds. The publicani, so called 
while they were gatherers of the publicum, or state revenue ; these were commonly 
Eoman knights, who farmed the taxes in companies, and this occupation was not 
in disesteem, but the contrary. Besides these were the portitores, or exactores, 
who are here meant by re\uvai, men of an inferior sort, freedmen, provincials, and 
the like, who did the lower work of the collection, and probably greatly abused the 
power which of necessity was left in their hands. They were commonly stationed 
at frontiers, at gates of cities, on rivers, at havens (vendentium ipsius cceli et terra 
et maris transitus ; Tertullian), for the purpose of collecting customs on the wares 
which were brought into the country. They were sufficiently hateful among the 
Greeks on account of their rudeness, their frauds, their vexations and oppressions; 
as they are here classed with anapruXol, so by them with fioixot and iropvofiocrKoi, and 
whole lists are given of the opprobrious epithets with which they were assailed. 
Cicero (In Patin. 5) gives a lively picture of their doings, telling Vatinius he must 
have thought himself one of these publicans, cam omnium domos, apothecas, naves, 



THE LOST SHEEP. 301 

fluch as till awakened by him to repentance and a sense of their past 
sins, had been notorious transgressors of God's holy law. He did not 
repel them ; nor seem to fear, as the Pharisees would have done, pollution 
from their touch ; but being come to seek and to save that which was 
lost, received them graciously, instructed them further in his doctrine, 
and lived in familiar intercourse with them. At this the scribes and 
Pharisees murmured and took offence* — seeming as it did to them con- 
duct unbecoming a teacher of righteousness. They could more easily 
have understood a John Baptist, flying to the wilderness, so to avoid the 
contamination of sinners, separating himself from them outwardly in the 
whole manner of his life, as well as inwardly in his spirit. And this 
outward separation from sinners, which was the Old Testament form of 
righteousness, might have been needful for those who would preserve 
their purity in those times of the law and till the Lord came, — till he, first 
in his own person, and then through his Church, brought a far mightier 
power of good to bear upon the evil of the world, than ever had been 
brought before. It had hitherto been prudent for those who felt them- 
selves predisposed to the infection to flee from the infected, but he was 
the physician who rather came boldly to seek out the infected, that he 
might heal them ; and furnishing his servants with divine antidotes 
against the world's sickness, sent them also boldly to encounter and over- 
come it. This was what the Pharisees and scribes could not understand ; 
it seemed to them impossible that any one should walk pure and unspot- 
ted amid the pollutions of the world, seeking and not shunning sinners. 
They had neither love to hope the recovery of such, nor medicines to 
effect that recovery. 

furacissime scrutarere, hominesque negotia gerentes judiciis iniquissimis irretires, 
mercatores e navi egredientes terreres, conscendentes morarere. Chrysostom (Z>e 
Pcenit., Horn. ii. 4) would seem to say that the business itself from its very nature, 
apart from the frauds to which it too often led, was unrighteous : OuSev &Wo i<rr\ 
TiKoivt\(T fy ireirappr](na(r/x€U7] fitu, ipvofxos a/xapria, €VTTp6ffuiros 7rA.€Ove|ta. But the 
Jewish publicans were further hateful to their countrymen, being accounted traitors 
to the cause of the nation and of God, who for the sake of filthy lucre had sided 
with the Komans, the enemies and oppressors of the theocracy, and now collected 
for a heathen treasury that tribute, the payment of which was the evident sign of 
the subjection of the people of God to a foreign yoke. Of the abhorrence in which 
they were held there is abundant testimony ; no alms might be received from 
their money-chest, nay it was not even lawful to change money there ; their 
evidence was not received in courts of justice ; they were put on the sam« level 
with heathens (to keep which in mind, adds an emphasis to Luke xix. 9), and no 
doubt, as renegades and traitors, were far more abhorred even than the heathen 
themselves. (See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Publicani, p. 806, and 
Deyling's Obss. Sac., v. 1, p. 206.) 

* Gregory the Great (Horn. 34 in Evang.) : Arenti corde ipsum Fontem miseri- 
cordiaB reprehendebant. 



302 THE LOST SHEEP. 

As another expression of their discontent (Luke v. 30) had called 
out those blessed words, " Those that are whole need not a physician, 
but they that are sick ; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance ;" so their later murmurings were the occasion of the three 
parables which here follow one another, in the which he seeks to shame 
the murmurers out of their murmurs, showing them how little sympathy 
those murmurs found in that higher heavenly world from whence he 
came. He holds up to them God and the angels of God rejoicing at the 
conversion of a sinner, and silently contrasts this, the liberal joy and 
exultation of heaven, with the narrow discontent and envious repinings 
that found place in their hearts. The holy inhabitants of heaven did 
not count scorn of the repentant sinner, but welcomed him into their 
fellowship with gladness. Would tlwy dare, in the pride of their legal 
righteousness, and of their exemption from some gross offences whereof 
he had been guilty, refuse to receive him, keeping him at a distance, as 
though his very touch would defile them % 

Nor is it merely that there is joy in heaven over the penitent sinner, 
but the Lord warns them, if they indulge in this pride, — if they shut 
themselves up in this narrow form of legal righteousness, — there will 
be more joy in heaven over one of these penitents whom they so much 
despised, than over ninety-nine of such as themselves. He does not 
deny the good that might be in them ; many of them, no doubt, had a 
zeal for God, — were following after righteousness such as they knew it, 
a righteousness according to the law. But if now that a higher right- 
eousness was brought into the world, — a righteousness by faith, the new 
life of the Gospel, — they obstinately refused to become partakers of this 
new life, preferring to serve in the oldness of the letter instead of the 
newness of the Spirit, then such as would receive this life from him, 
though having, in times past, departed infinitely wider from God than 
they had ever done, yet would now be brought infinitely nearer to him, 
as the one sheep was brought home to tlw house, while the ninety and 
nine abode iL the wilderness, — as for the prodigal a fatted calf was 
slain, while the elder brother received not so much as a kid. Nay, in 
the last parable they are bidden to beware lest the spirit they are now 
indulging in, if allowed further, do not shut them out altogether, or ra- 
ther, lest they do not through it exclude themselves altogether from that 
new kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, 
which the Lord was establishing upon earth, and into which they, as 
well as the publicans and sinners, were invited freely to enter. 

Of the three parables, the two first, those of the Lost Sheep and the 
Lost Piece of Money, set forth to us mainly the seeking love of God ; 
while the third, that of the Prodigal Son, describes to us rather the rise 
and growth responsive to that love of repentance in the heart of man. 



THE LOST SHEEP. 303 

It i«, in fact, only the same truth presented successively under different 
aspects, God's seeking love being set forth first, and this not without 
reason, since we thus are taught that all first motions towards good are 
from him, that grace must prevent as well as follow us. But yet is it 
the same truth in all ; for it is the confluence of this drawing and seek- 
ing love from without, and of the faith awakened by the same power 
from within, — the confluence of these two streams, the objective grace 
and the subjective faith. — out of which repentance springs. The para- 
bles in this chapter would have seemed incomplete without one another, 
but together form a perfect and harmonious -vhole. Separately they 
would have seemed incomplete, for the two first speak nothing of a 
changed heart and mind toward God ; nor, indeed, would the images of 
a sheep and piece of money have conveniently allowed this ; while the 
last speaks only of this change, and nothing of that which must have 
caused it, the antecedent working of the Spirit of God in the heart, the 
going forth of his power and love, which must have found the wanderer, 
before he could ever have found himself, or found his God. We may 
thus contemplate these parables under the aspect of a trilogy, which yet 
again is to be divided into two unequal portions of two and one — St. 
Luke himself distinctly marking the break and the new beginning 
which finds place after the two first. 

But there are also many other inner harmonies and relations be- 
tween them which are interesting to observe and trace. Thus there is 
a seeming anti-climax in the numbers named in the successive parables, 
which is in reality a climax, — one in a hundred* — one in ten, — one in 
two ; the feeling of the value of the part lost would naturally increase 
with the proportion which it bore to the whole. And other human feel- 
ings and interests are implied in the successive narratives, which would 
have helped to enhance in each successive case the anxiety for the re- 
covery of what was lost. The possessor of a hundred sheep must have 
been in some sort a rich man, therefore not likely to feel the loss of a 
single one out of his flock, so deeply as the woman who, having but ten 
small pieces of money, should of these lose one : again the intensity of 
her feeling would come infinitely short of the parental affection of a 
father, who, having but two sons, should behold one out of these two 
go astray. Thus we find ourselves moving in ever narrower and so 
ever in tenser circles of hope and fear and l<*ve — drawing in each suc- 
cessive parable nearer to the innermost centre and heart of the truth. 

* This was a familiar way of numbering and dividing among the Jews, of which 
examples are given by Lightfoot here. There is also a striking saying attributed to 
Mahomet, in which the same appears.— The Lord God has divided mercy and pity 
into a hundred parts ; of these, he has retained ninety and nine for himself, and 
lent one upon earth. (Yon Hammer's Fundgruben d. Orients, v. 1, p. 308.) 



304 THE LOST SHEEP. 

In each case too we may see shadowed forth a greater guilt and 
therefore a greater grace. In the first parable the guilt is the smallest, 
The sinner is set forth under the image of a silly wandering sheep. 
Though this is but one side of the truth, yet is it a most real one, that 
sin is oftentimes an ignorance : the sinner knows not what he does, and 
if in one aspect he deserves wrath, in another claims pity : he is a sheep 
that has gone astray, ere it knew what it was doing, ere it had even 
learned that it had a shepherd, that it belonged to a fold. So is it with 
a multitude of wanderers, in whom all this knowledge was yet latent, 
and who went astray before ever it was effectually called out. But there 
are others, set forth under the lost money, who having known them- 
selves to be God's, to be stamped with his image, the image of the Great 
King, on their souls, do yet throw themselves away, renounce their high 
birth, and wilfully lose themselves in the world. Their sin is greater, 
but there is a sin yet greater than theirs behind — the sin of the prodigal 
— to have known something of the love of God — to have known some- 
thing of him, not as our King who has stamped us with his image, but 
as our Father in whose house we are, and yet to have slighted that 
love, and forsaken that house — this is the crowning guilt ; and yet the 
grace of God is sufficient to forgive even this sin, # and to bring back 
such a wanderer even as this to himself. 

The first parable of the series had a peculiar fitness addressed to the 
spiritual rulers of the Jewish people. They too were shepherds — con- 
tinually charged, rebuked, warned, under this very title (Ezek. xxxiv. ; 
Zech. xi. 16), under-shepherds of him who set forth his own watchful 
tenderness for his people under the same image (Isai. xl. 11; Jer. 
xxxi. 10; Ezek. xxxiv. 12; xxxvii. 24; Zech. xiii. 7; cf. Ps. xxiii. 1; 
lxxx. 1) ; yet now were they finding fault with Christ for doing that 
very thing which they ought, and which the name they bore should 
have reminded them they ought, to have done. Not only were they 
themselves no seekers of the lost,f no bringers back of the strayed, but 
they murmured against him, the Shepherd of Israel, the great Shepherd 
of the sheep, because he came doing in his own person, what they his 
deputies so long had neglected to do, because he came to make good 
what they had marred. 

In the common things of our daily experience, a sheep which could 
wander away from, could ^lso wander back to, the fold. But it is not 
so with a sheep of God's pasture : this could lose, but it could not find 

* Bengel : Ovis, drachma, films perditus : peccator stupidus, sui plane nescius 
sciens et voluntarius. 

* One of the charges against the false shepherds, Ezek. xxxiv. 4, is just this, ri 
InoKwKbs ovk e^rjT^traTe. 



THE LOST SHEEP. 305 

itself again ; there is in sin a centrifugal tendency, and of necessity the 
wanderings of this sheep could only be further and further away. 
Therefore, if it shall be found at all, this can only be by its Shepherd 
going to seek it; without this, being once lost, it must be lost for ever.* 
It might at first sight appear as though the Shepherd were caring for the 
one strayed, at the expense and risk of all the others, leaving as he does 
the other " ninety and nine in the ivilderness" But it need hardly be 
observed, that we are not to understand of u the wilderness" as of a 
sandy or rocky desert, without herbage, — the haunt of wild beasts or of 
wandering robber hordes, — but rather as wide-extended grassy plains, 
steppes or savannas, called desert because without habitations of men, 
but exactly the fittest place for the pasture of sheep. Thus we read iD 
St. John (vi. 10) that there was much grass in a place which another 
Evangelist calls a desert, and no doubt we commonly attach to " desert'' 
or " wilderness," in Scripture, images of far more uniform barrenness and 
desolation and dreariness than the reality would warrant. Parts, it is 
true, of any of the large deserts of Palestine or Arabia, are as dreary 
and desolate as can be imagined, though quite as much from rock as from 
sandy levels — yet we learn from travellers, that on the whole there is in 
those deserts, or wildernesses, much greater variety of scenery, much 
more to refresh the eye, much larger extents of fertile or at least grassy 
land, than is commonly supposed ;f so that the residue of the flock are 

* Augustine presses this point, observing how, though nothing is said of the 
father either sending by the hand of another or himself looking for the prodigal 
son, yet we are not therefore to see in his return, in his "I will arise," an^ 
independent resolution of the sinner's own, but rather to complete that parable 
from this (Enarr. in Ps. lxxvii. 19) : Eedit ovis perdita, non tamen in viribus suis, 
sed in humeris reportata pastoris, quae se perdere potuit, dum sponte vagaretur, se • 
auteni invenire non potuit, nee omnio inveniretur, nisi pastoris misericordia quse- 
reretur. Non enim et ille filius ad hanc ovem non pertinet, qui reversus in seme- 
tipsum dixit. Surgam et ibo ad patrem meum. Occulta, itaque vocatione et 
inspiratione etiam ipse queesitus est et resuscitatus, nonnisi ab illo qui vivificat 
omnia : et inventus, k quo, nisi ab illo qui perrexit salvare et quaerere quod 
perierat 1 

f This is the admirable description of a late traveller in the East: " Stern and 
monotonous as may be called the general features of a desert, let not the reader 
suppose it is all barren. There are indeed some accursed patches, where scores of 
miles lie before you, like a tawny Atlantic, one yellow wave rising before another. 
But far from unfrequently there are regions of wild fertility, where the earth 
shoots forth a jungle of aromatic shrubs, and most delicious are the sensations con- 
veyed to the parched European, as the camel treads down the underwood with his 
broad foot, and scatters to the winds the exhalations of a thousand herbs. There 
are other districts, where the hard and compact gravel would do honor to a lady's 
shrubbery : in these regions you meet with dwarf trees, and long ridges of low bare 
rocks, of fantastic configuration, along whose base you find the yellow partridge 
and the black-eyed gazelle." 
20 



306 THE LOST SHEEP. 

left here in their ordinary pasturage, while the shepherd goes after that 
one which is lost till he finds it. 

Christ's Incarnation was a girding of himself to go after his lost 
sheep. His whole life upon earth, his entire walk in the flesh, was a 
following of the strayed one ; for in his own words he was come, this was 
the very purpose of his coming, namely, " to seek and to save that which 
was lost." And he sought his own till he found it. He was not weary 
with the greatness of the way ; he shrank not when the thorns wounded 
his flesh, and tore his feet. He followed us into the deep of our misery, 
came under the extremity of our malediction. For he had gone forth to 
seek his own till he had found it, and would not pause till then. And 
having found, how tenderly the shepherd handles that sheep which has 
cost him all this labor and fatigue : he does not punish it ; he does not 
smite, nor even harshly drive it hack to the fold : nay, he does not de- 
liver it to a servant, but he lays it upon his own* shoulders, and himself 
carefully carries it, till he brings it to the fold. In this last circumstance 
we recognize an image of the sustaining and supporting grace of Christ, 
which does not cease till his rescued are made partakers of final salvation. 
But when some press and make much of the weariness which this load 
must have caused to the shepherd, seeing here an allusion to his suffer- 
ings, " who bare our sins in his own body,"f upon whom were laid the 
iniquities of us all, this seems to me a missing here of the true signifi- 
cance. For rather the words " till he find it" I should take as having 
told the whole story of the painfulness of his way, who came in search of 
his lost creature, a way which led him, as he would not cease till he 
found his own, to the cross and to the grave ; and this is now rather the 

* 'Eirl rovs iofiovs kavrov. 

■f Cajetan : Impositio ovis in humeros redemptio est humani generis in proprio 
eorpore, et hoc quia sponte fecit, ideo gaudens describitur. M elancthon : Est in 
textu suavis significatio inserta passionis Christi : ovem inventam ponit in humeros 
suos, i. e. ipse onus nostrum transfert in se ipsum. The lines of Prudentius {Hymn, 
.post Jefin.) have much beauty : — 

Die ovem morbo residem gregique 
Perditam sano, male dissipantem 
Vellus affixis vepribus per hirtaB 

Devia silvae 
lmpiger pastor revocat, lupisque 
Gestat exclusis, humeros gravatus ; 
Inde purgatam revehens aprico 

Reddit ovili, 
Reddit et pratis viridique campo 
Vibrat impexis ubi nulla lappis 
Spica, nee germen sudibus perarmat 

Carduus horrens : 
Sed frequens palmis nemus, et reflexa 
Vernat herb arum coma, turn perennw 
Gurgitem vivis vitreum fluentis 

Laurua obumbrat. 



THE LOST SHEEP. 307 

story of his triumphant return* to heaven with the trophies that he had 
won, the spoil that he had delivered from the lion's jaws. 

And as the man reaching home summons friends and neighbors to 
be sharers in hisf joy, as they had been sharers in his anxiety, for he 
speaks of the sheep as one with the loss of which they were acquainted 
and had sympathized, so Christ declares that there shall be joy in heaven 
on the occasion of one sinner repenting, one wandering sheep of the 
heavenly fold brought back to it again — that heaven and earth form but 
one kingdom, being bound together by that love which is " the bond of 
perfectness." He keeps indeed back, as far as any distinct declaration 
in words goes, who the bringer back is, but since he is justifying his own 
conduct in inviting sinners to repentance, lets it sufficiently plainly appear 
who it is, that it is even himself, who returning to the heavenly places 
shall cause jubilee there. For we must observe, that he speaks of this 
joy as future, as one hereafter to be — not as yet does he contemplate the 
occasion of this joy as having been given, since not as yet has he returned 
to his house, not as yet risen and ascended, leading captivity captive, and 
bringing with him his rescued and redeemed. Nor should we miss the 
slight yet majestic intimation of the dignity of his person which he gives 
in that " I say unto you" — I who know, I who, when I tell you of hea- 
venly things, tell you of mine own, of things which I have seen (John 
iii. 11) — I say to you that this joy shall be in heaven on the recovery of 
the lost. 

"Were this all that Christ had declared, there would be nothing to 
perplex us ; but he declares further, that there is not merely joy over 
one penitent, but more joy over him "than over ninety and nine just 
persons which need no repentance" Now we can easily understand, how, 
among men, there should be more joy for a small portion which has been 
endangered, than for the continued secure possession of a much larger 
portion : we might say with Luther, it is the mother, concentrating for 
the moment all her affection on her sick child, and seeming to a by- 
stander to' love none but that only, and rejoicing at that one child's 
recovery more than at the uninterrupted health of all the others. Or to 
use Augustine's beautiful words.J " What then takes place in the soul, 

* Gregory the Great (Horn. 34 in Evang.) : Inventa ove ad domum redit, quia 
Pastor noster'reparato homine ad regnum coeleste rediit. Bengel : Jesus Christus 
plane in ascensione domum rediit ; coelum ejus domus est ; Jon. xiv. 2. 

f Gregory the Great {Horn. 34 in Evang.) on this "Rejoice with me" has a 
striking remark : Non dicit, Congratulamini inventae ovi, sed mihi ; quia videlicit 
ejus gaudium est vita nostra, et cum nos ad coelum reducimur, solemnitatem 
laetitije ejus implemus. 

% Confessions, b. 3, c. 3. I have taken the liberty of using here and once before 
the noble translation of the Confessions, published in the Library of the Fathers. 



308 THE LOST SHEEP. 

when it is more delighted at finding or recovering the things it loveSj 
than if it had ever had them ? Yea, and other things witness hereunto, 
and all things are full of witnesses, crying out, ' So it is.' The conquer- 
ing commander triumpheth ; yet had he not conquered, unless he had 
fought, and the more peril there was in the battle, so much the more joy 
is there in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors, threatens ship, 
wreck ; all wax pale at approaching death ; sky and sea are calmed, and 
they are exceeding joyed, as having been exceeding afraid. A friend is 
sick, and his pulse threatens danger ; all who long for his recovery are, 
sick in mind with him. He is restored, though as yet he walks not with 
his former strength, yet there is such joy as was not when before he 
walked sound and strong."* Yet whence arises the disproportionate 
joy? clearly from the unexpectedness of the result, from the temporary 
uncertainty concerning it. But nothing of the kind could find place 
with God, who knows the end from the beginning, whose joy needs not 
to be provoked and heightened by a fear going before ; nor with him 
need the earnest love for the one, as in the case of the mother and her 
children, throw into the background, even for the moment, the love and 
care for the others — so that the analogy hardly holds good. 

And yet further, there being said to be any " tvhich need no repent- 
ance" is difficult, since the prophet says, "All we like sheep have gone 
astray ;" and therefore all must have need to search and try back our 
ways ; nor do the explanations commonly given quite remove the per- 
plexity, f We may indeed get rid both of this difficulty and the other, 
by seeing here an example of the Lord's severe yet loving irony. These 
ninety and nine, not needing repentance, would then be — like those 

* Thus too Bernard says {In Cant., Serm. 29) : Nescio autem quomodo tenerias 
mihi adstricti sunt qui post increpatoria et per increpatoria tandem convaluerunt 
do infirmitate, quam qui fortes ab initio permanserunt, non indigentes istiusmodi 
medicamento, — words which are the more valuable for the illustration of the text, 
as spoken with no immediate reference to it. 

t As for instance that by Grotius : Quibus non est opus de toto vitae generc 
inigrare ; and by Calvin : Nomen poenitentios specialiter ad eorum conversionem 
rostringitur, qui penitus a Deo aversi, quasi a morte in vitam resurgunt. Nam 
alioqui continua in totam vitam esse debet pcenitentice meditatio ; nee quisquam 
ab h&c necessitate eximitur, quum singulos sua vitia ad quotidianum profectum 
sollicitent— A very curious, but not very fortunate, scheme for getting rid of the 
difficulty which attends the words " who need no repentance." has been proposed by 
some. The ninety-nine just signify the whole unfallen creation, the world of angels. 
•' These," says Theophylact, who however proposes the interpretation not as his 
own (<pa<yiv rives), " the good Shepherd left in the wilderness, that is, in the higher 
heavenly places, for heaven is this wilderness, being sequestered from all worldly 
tumult, and fulfilled with all tranquillity and peace," and came to seek the wan- 
dering and lost human nature. The interpretation finds more favor with Hilary, 
Comm. in Matth., xviii. 10. 



THE LOST SHEEP. 309 

whole who need not, or count that they need not, a physician, — self- 
righteous persons, persons therefore displeasing in the eye of God, and 
whose present life could naturally cause no joy in heaven — so that it 
would be easy to understand how a sinner's conversion would cause 
more joy than their continuance in their evil state. But the Lord could 
hardly have meant to say merely this ; and moreover, the whole con- 
struction of the parables is against such an explanation : the ninety and 
nine sheep have not wandered, the nine pieces of money have not been 
lost, the elder brother has not left his father's house. The one view of 
the parables which affords a solution of the difficulties appears to be 
this — that we understand these " righteous" as really such, but also that 
their righteousness is merely legal, is of the old dispensation, so that the 
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than they. The law had done 
a part of its work for them, keeping them from gross positive transgres- 
sions of its enactments, and thus they needed not, like the publicans 
and sinners, repentance on account of such ; but it had not done an- 
other part of its work, it had not brought them, as God intended it 
should, to a conviction of sin, it had not prepared them to receive 
Christ, and gladly to embrace his salvation. The publicans and sinners, 
though by another path, had come to him ; and he now declares that 
there was more real ground of joy over one of these,* who were now 
entering into the inner sanctuary of faith, than over ninety and nine of 
themselves, who lingered at the legal vestibule, refusing to go fur- 
ther in.f 

* Here the illustration of Gregory the Great may fairly be applied : Dux in 
praelio plus eum militem diligit, qui post fugam conversus, fortiter hostem premit, 
quam ilium qui nunquam terga praebuit et nunquam aliquid fortiter gessit. And 
Anselm {Horn. 12) : Sunt aliqui justi, qui licet justi vivant et ab illicitis se conti- 
neant, magna tamen bona nunquam operantur. Et sunt alii qui prius seculariter 
et criminose vixerunt, sed postmodum redeuntes ad cor suum, quia se illicite egisse 
considerant, ex ipso suo dolore compuncti, inardescunt ad amorem Dei, seseque in 
magnis virtutibus exercent, cuncta etiam difficilia sancti certaminis appetunt, 
omnia mundi blandimenta derelinquunt ; et quia se errasse a Deo conspiciunt, damna 
praecedentia lucris sequentibus recompensant. 

f There is no image upon which the early Church seems to have dwelt with 
greater delight than this of Christ as the good Shepherd bringing home his lost 
sheep. TTe have abundant confirmation of this in the very many gems, seals, 
fragments of glass, and other early Christian relics which have reached us, on 
which Christ is thus portrayed as bringing back a lost sheep to the fold upon his 
shoulders. From a passing allusion in Tertullian (De Panit., c. 7, 10), we learn 
that it was in .his time painted on the chalice of the Holy Communion. Christ 
appears in the same character of the Good Shepherd in bas-reliefs on sarcophagi, 
and paintings in the catacombs— one of which last is believed to be as early as 
the third century. Sometimes there are other sheep at his feet, generally two, 
looking up with apparent pleasure at him and his burden ; in his right hand he 
most often holds the seven-reeded pipe of Pan, the attractions of divine love, with 



310 THE LOST SHEEP. 

his left he steadies the burden which he is bearing on his shoulders. Some* 
times he is sitting down, as if weary with the length of the way. And it is 
observable that this representation always occupies the place of honor, the cen- 
tre of the vault or tomb. In Munter's Sinnbilder der Alt. Christ, v. 1, pp. 60-65, 
there are various details on the subject, and many copies of these portraitures, 
which are interesting specimens of early Christian art. See too Bossio's Rom, 
Stoterr. pp. 339, 348, 349, 351, 373, 383, 387, for various delineations of the same, 
and Didron's Iconogr. Chritienne, p. 346. 



XXIII. 
THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY. 

Luke xv. 8-10. 

The parable which has just gone "before, has naturally anticipated much 
that might have been said upon this, and yet we must not think so poorly 
of our Lord's wisdom as a speaker of parables, as to conclude them 
merely identical. It would be against all analogy of preceding parables 
to presume that these two said merely the same thing, twice over. The 
Pearl and the Hid. Treasure, the Leaven and the Mustard Seed, at first 
sight appear the same, and the second but to repeat the first, and yet, as 
we have found, on closer inspection important differences reveal them- 
selves; and so is it here. If the shepherd in the last parable was 
Christ, the woman in this may, perhaps, be the Church ;• or if we say 
that by her is signified the Divine Wisdom,! which so often in Proverbs 
is described as seeking the salvation of men, and is here as elsewhere 
set forth as a person (Luke xi. 49), and not an attribute, this will be no 
different view. For rather these two explanations flow into one, when 
we keep in mind how the Church is the organ in and through which the 
Holy Spirit seeks for the lost, and how only as the Church is quickened 
and informed by the Divine Spirit, is it stirred up to these active minis- 
tries of love for the seeking and saving of souls. That the Church 
should be personified as a woman is only natural ; nor has the thought 
of the Holy Ghost as a mother been at different times far from men's 
minds.J Keeping prominently in mind then that it is only the Church, 

* Ambrose : Qui sunt isti, pater, pastor, mulier 1 nonne Deus pater, Christua 
pastor, mulier Ecclesia 1 

t Gregory the Great (Horn. 34 in Evang.) ; Ipse etenim Deus, ipse et Dei Sa- 
pientia. 

£ See some interesting remarks in Jerome (Comm. in Esai. xl. 3, p. 303) ex- 
plaining and justifying this language ; while at the same time he guards with say- 
ing : In divinitate nullus est sexus. Christ claims too for himself the mother'i 
hoart in his affecting words, Luke xiii. 34. 



312 THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY. 

because and in so far as it is dwelt in by the Spirit, which appears as 
the woman seeking her lost, that it is only as the Spirit says " Come," 
that the Bride can say it, we shall have in the three parables the three 
Persons of the Holy Trinity, albeit not in their order, since other re- 
spects prevailed to give the parables a different succession. Moreover, 
any reluctance to accept this interpretation, as though it were putting 
the Church too near upon an equality with its Lord, is in this way re- 
moved ; and besides, if we do find in this parable a picture of the Church 
carrying forward the same work which its Lord auspicated and com- 
menced, what is this but in agreement with Christ's own words, that it 
should do the same works that he did and greater — only, however, be- 
cause he went to the Father, and shedding abroad the Holy Ghost, him- 
self carried on from heaven the work which he had begun in his own 
person upon earth ? 

In the one piece of money,* which the woman loses out of her ten, 
expositors, both ancient and modern, have delighted to trace a resem- 
blance to the human soul, which was originally stamped with the image 
and superscription of the great Kingf (" God created man in his own 
image" Gen. i. 27), and which still retains traces of the mint from 
which it proceeded, though by sin the image has been nearly effaced, 
and the superscription has well nigh become illegible.^ Nor is this all; 
as the piece of money is lost for all useful purposes to its right owner, 
so man, through sin, is become unprofitable, and worse than unprofitable, 
to God, who has not from him that service which is due. 

But as the woman having lost her piece of money, will "light a 
candle and sweep^ the house, and seek diligently till size find it ;" even 



* In the original, it is not indefinitely a piece of money, but a drachma, the 
commonest of Greek coins. Except during a part of the Maccabaean rule, the 
Jews never coined any money of their own. The Herodian coins, now fbund in 
collections, were rather medals struck on particular occasions, than money. 

f Thus Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii.) : Sapientia Dei perdiderat drach- 
mam. Quid est Drachma 1 Numus in quo numo imago erat ipsius Imperatoris 
nostri. Compare Ignatius {Ad Magn., c. 5), though he refers not to this parable: 
'Effriu vofxicrixara duo, h /xev ®eov, t> 5e kSct/xov, Kal e/caCTOv, avrwv Ihiov x a P aKT VP<* 
iTTLKei/JLevou e^ei, ol <xirio~Toi rod kSo'/jlov tovtov, ol 5e tticttoI iv aydirr) ^apaKTrjpa Qeov 
Uarpbs 8ta 'Irjcrov Xpiarov. 

$ It is true that against this view it may be said that the Greek drachma, the 
coin here particularly named, had not, like the Eoman denarius (Matt. xxii. 20), 
the image and superscription of the emperor upon it, but commonly some image, 
as of an owl, or tortoise, or head of Pallas. 

() The erroneous reading, evertit, for everrit, prevailed in the copies of the Vul- 
gate during the middle ages. It appears as early as Gregory the Great (Horn. 
34 inEvang.), who says: Domus evcrtitur, quum consideratione reatus sui humana 
conscientia perturbatur. And Thauler's interpretation a good deal turns on that 



THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY. 313 

so the Lord, through the ministrations of his Church, gives diligence to 
recover the lost sinner, — to bring back the piece of money that was lost 
to the treasury of God, from which originally it issued.* The mean- 
ing which the Mystics have often found in the lighting of the candle 
or lamp, namely, that there is an allusion here to the mystery of the 
Incarnation — the divine glory which the Saviour had within, shining 
through the fleshly covering which only in part concealed it,f — this must 
of course give way, if we take the parable as I propose. Rather the 
lighting of the candle must be explained by the help and hints of such 
passages as these, namely, Matt. v. 14, 15; Phil. ii. 15; Ephes. v. 13. 
The candle is the word of God ; — this candle the Church holds forth, as 
she has and exercises a ministry of the "Word. It is by the light of this 
Word that sinners are found — that they find themselves, that the Church 
finds them.J Having this candle now to assist her in her search she pro- 
ceeds to sweep the house, which, as Bengel well remarks, non fit sine 
pulvere. What a deranging of the house for a time ! how does the dust 
which had been allowed to settle down and accumulate begin to rise and 
fly about in every direction ; how unwelcome that which is going for- 
ward to any that may be in the house and have no interest in the finding 
of that which has been' lost. Thus it is with the word of God. Ever- 
more the charge against it is, that it turns the world upside down, even 
as indeed it does. For only let that word be proclaimed, and how 
much of latent aversion to the truth becomes now open enmity ; how 
much of torpid alienation against God is changed into active hostility ; 
what an outcry is there against the troublers of Israel, against the wit- 
nesses that torment the dwellers upon earth, the men that will not leave 
the world alone. But amid all this, while others are making outcry 



very word : Deus hominem quasrit, domumque ejus penitus, evertit, quomodo no3 
solemus, aliquod requirentes. cuncta evertere, et loco suo movere, donee invenire 
contingat quod quserimus. So TTiclif : " Turneth up so down the house." 

* H. de Sto. Victore : Drachma reperitur, dum in homine similitudo conditoris 
reparatur ; and Bernard (De Grat. et Lib. Arb., c. 10) : Adhuc hie fceda et deformis 
jacuisset imago, si non evangelica ilia mulier lucernam accenderet, id est, Sapientia 
in carne apparerct, everrerct domum, videlicet vitiorum, drachmam suam reqireret 
quam perdiderat ; hoc est imaginem suam, qme nativo spoliata decore, sub pello 
peccati sordens tamquam in pulvere latitabat : inventam tergeret. et tolleret de 
regione dissimilitudinis, pristinamque in speciem reformatam, similem faceret 
illam in gloria, sanctorum, immo sibi ipsi per omnia redderet quandoque confor- 
mem, cum illud Scripturse videlicet impleretur; Scimus quia cum apparuerit, 
similes ei erimus ; quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est. 

t Thus Cajetan: Lucerna accensa mysterium est Incarnationis, Yerbum in 
carne, tanquam lux in testa. 

i So Tertullian (De Pudic c. 7) : Drachmam ad lucernae lumen repertam, quasi 
ad Dei verbum. 



314 THE LOST PIECE OF MONEY. 

about the dust and inconvenience, she that bears the candle of the Lord 
is diligently looking meanwhile for her lost, not ceasing her labor, 
her care, her diligence, till she has recovered her own again. 

"We must not omit to remark a difference between this parable and 
the preceding, which is more than accidental. In that the shepherd 
went to look for his lost sheep in the wilderness ; but it is in tlie house 
that this piece of money is lost, and there by consequence that it is 
sought for.* There is then a progress from that parable to this. The 
earthly house, the visible Church, now first appears. In that other there 
was the returning of the Son to the heavenly places, but in this there is 
intimation of a church which has been founded upon earth, and to which 
also sinners are restored. And there are other slighter variations be- 
tween the two parables, explicable at once on the same supposition that 
we have there the more immediate ministry of Christ, and here the second- 
ary ministry of his Church. The shepherd says, " I have found my 
sheep " — not so the woman, " I have found the coin " — for it is in no sense 
hers as the sheep was his. He says, "which was lost:" but she, "which 
I lost," confessing a fault and carelessness of her own, which was the 
original cause of the loss — even as it must have been ; for a sheep strays 
of itself, but a piece of money could only be lost by a certain negligence 
on the part of such as should have kept it. 

* Origen also presses the fact that this money was found within the house, and 
not without it, though with a different purpose. He is dealing with Gen. xxvi. 18, 
to which he very fairly gives a deeper and allegorical interpretation, besides that 
which lay on the surface, namely this, — that those stopped wells are the fountains 
of eternal life, which the Philistines, that is, Satan and sin, had choked, but which 
our Isaac, the son of gladness, opened anew for us. And observing that such wells, 
though stopped indeed, are within every one of us (compare John iv. 14), ho 
brings into comparison this parable, noting that the lost money was not found 
without the house, but within it : for, he would say, at the bottom of every man's 
soul there is this image of God, mislaid indeed and quite out of sight, overlaid 
with a thousand other images, covered with dust and defilement, but which still 
may be found, and in his hands from whom it first came, may again recover its 
first brightness, and the sharpness of outline which it had at the beginning. His 
words are {In Gen. Horn. 13) : Mulier ilia qua3 perdiderat drachmam, non illam 
invenit extrinsecus, sed in domo sua posteaquam accendit lucernam, et mundavit 
• domum sordibus et immunditiis, quas longi temporis ignavia et hebetudo conges- 
serat, et ibi invenit drachmam. Et tu ergo, si accendas lucernam. si adhibeas tibi 
illuminationem Spiritus Sancti, et in lumine ejus videas lumen, invenies intra te 
drachmam. Qhm enim faceret hominem ex initio Deus, ad imaginem et simili- 
tudinem suam fecit eum ; et hanc imaginem non extrinsecus, sed intra eum col- 
locavit. Haec in te videri non poterat, donee domus tua sordida erat, immunditiis 
et ruderibus repleta. Iste fons sciential intra te erat situs, sed non poterat 
fluere, quia Philistini repleverant eum terra et fecerant in te imaginem terreni. 
Sed tu portasti quidem tunc imaginem terreni, nunc vero his auditis ab ilia omni 
mole et oppressione terrena per Verbum Dei purgatus, imaginem ccelestis in te 
tplendescere facito. 



THE LOST PIECE OF MONET. 315 

The woman having found her own, B calleth her friends and her 
neighbors together? that they may "be sharers in her joy. (Compare 
Ruth iv. 14, 17.) It is only natural that, according to the groundwork 
of the parable, this being a woman, the friends and neighbors she sum- 
mons should be described as female also, though this escapes us in the 
English version. That they are so does not hinder us in applying the 
words, — we have indeed in the next verse the Lord's warrant for apply- 
ing them, — to the angels; whose place we shall observe is not "in heaven" 
in this parable which it was in the last ; for this is the rejoicing together 
of the redeemed and elect creation upon earth at the repentance of a 
sinner. The angels that walk up and down the earth, that are present 
in the congregations of the faithful, offended at aught unseemly among 
them (1 Cor. xi. 10), joying to behold their order, but most of all joying 
when a sinner is converted, — there shall be joy before them, when the 
Church of the redeemed, quickened by the Holy Spirit, summons them 
to join with it in consenting hymns of thanksgiving to Grod for the recov- 
ery of a lost soul. For indeed if the "sons of God" shouted for joy and 
sang together at the first creation (Job xxxviii. 7), how much more when 
a new creation has found place, at the birth of a soul into the light of 
everlasting life (Ephes. iii. 10; 1 Pet. i. 12); for according to that ex- 
quisite word of St. Bernard's, the tears of penitence are the wine of 
angels,* and their conversion, as Luther says, causes Te Deums among 
the heavenly host. 

* Pcenitentium lacrymse, vinum Angelorum ; and with allusion to this parable 
the Christian poet sings : — 

Amissa drachma regio 
Recondita est serario ; 
Et gemma, deterso luto, 
Nilore vincit sidera. 



XXIV. 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 

Luke xv. 11-32. 

We have now come to a parable which, if it be permitted to compare 
things divine one with another, we might call the pearl and crown of all 
the parables of Scripture ; as it is also the most elaborate, if again we 
might venture to use a word, which has an evident unfitness when ap- 
plied to the spontaneous and the free, but which yet the completeness of 
all the minor details seems to suggest ; — one too containing within itself 
such a circle of doctrine as abundantly to justify the title Evangelium 
in JSvangelio, which has been sometimes given it. In regard of its great 
primary application, there have always been two different views in the 
Church. There are those who have seen in the two sons the Jew and 
Grentile, and in the younger son's departure from his father's house, the 
history of the great apostasy of the Glentile world, in his return its recep- 
tion into the privileges of the new covenant ; — as in the elder brother a 
lively type of the narrow-hearted self-extolling Jews, who grudged that 
the "sinners of the Gentiles" should be admitted to the same blessings 
as themselves, and who on this account would not themselves u go in? 
Others, again, have beheld in the younger son a pattern of all those who, 
whether Jews or Gentiles, whether in that old dispensation which was 
then drawing to an end, or brought up in the bosom of the Christian 
Church, have widely departed from God, and after having tasted the 
misery which follows upon all departure from him, have by his grace 
been brought back to him, as to the one source of blessedness and life ; 
— while they in the elder brother have seen either a narrow form of real 
righteousness, or, accepting his words to be only his own account of him- 
self, of Pharisaical self-righteousness, — one righteous in his own sight, 
not in the Lord's. 

They who maintain this last explanation, object to the other which 
makes the two sons to represent the Jew and Gentile (and the objection 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 317 

appears decisive), that it is alien to the scope of the parable ; for that 
was spoken in reply to the murmurings of the Scribes and Pharisees 
(ver. 1, 2), who were offended that Jesus received and consorted with 
publicans and sinners. Before that interpretation can have any claim 
to stand, it must be shown that these publicans and sinners were hea- 
thens. Tertullian, indeed, boldly asserts that the publicans were ahvays 
heathens ; but he was not very careful what he asserted when he had a 
point to prove, which he had in the present instance, namely this, that 
no encouragement could be drawn from this Scripture for the receiving 
back of great offenders into Church communion. But there is abundant 
evidence, some Scriptural, and more derived from other sources, that 
many of the publicans, probably of those in Judaea, if not' all, yet far the 
gTeater number, were of Jewish birth. Zacchaeus was " a son of Abra- 
ham" (Luke xix. 9), and Levi, who sat at the receipt of customs, must 
needs have been so too : and publicans were among those who came to 
the baptism of John. (Luke vii. 29.*) They were indeed placed by 
their fellow-countrymen on a level with heathens : and some heathen 
publicans even within the limits of Judaea there may have been, but 
doubtless these whom Jesus received, and with whom he consorted, were 
publicans of Jewish origin, for with none but Jews did he familiarly live 
during his walk upon earth ; he was " not sent but unto the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel ;" and John xii. 30-22 shows us how unusual a thing 
it was for him to break through this rule.f 



* See also Lightfoot, Hot. Heb., on Matt. v. 46. 

t Many of these arguments in proof that the publicans of the New Testament 
were Jews, are adduced by Jerome. (Ep. 21, ad Damasum.) He seems lost in 
wonder (vehementer admiror) at the audacity of Tertullian's assertion to the con- 
trary. The great aim of the latter in his treatise De Pudicitia, c. 7-9, written 
after he had forsaken the Catholic Church, is by proving that contrary, to rob the 
parable of all the encouragement and consolation which it might otherwise afford 
to the penitent sinner ; and in his passionate eagerness for this, he does not pause at 
a small matter, — for instance, he declares the occasion of the parable to have been, 
quod PharisEei publicanos et peccatores ethnicos admittentem Dominum mussitabant. 
One cannot sufficiently admire his bold insertion of the ethnicos, nor how elsewhere 
{Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 37,) even our Lord's declaration that Zacchaeus was " a son ot 
Abraham," is not decisive with him, (Zacchaeus etsi allophylus fortasse, tamen 
aliqua notitia Scripturarum ex commercio Judaico afflatus,) nor his proof from 
Deut. xxiii. 18, that no Israelite could have been a publican, in which matter it is 
difficult to think that one so profoundly skilled in all Roman antiquities should not 
have known better. His fear is lest sinners should be overbold in their sin, having 
hope, like the prodigal, to find favor and grace whenever they will return to their 
God; and he asks, " "Who will fear to squander what he can afterwards recover 1 
"Who will care always to keep what he is not in danger of always losing 1" But it 
once, leaving the ground of Scripture, he comes to arguments of this sort, we 
might demand in return,— Is it on calculations of this sort that men rush into sin 1 



318 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

These "publicans and sinners" then were Jews — outcasts indeed of 
the nation, scorned and despised, and till the words of Christ had 
awakened in them a nobler life, no doubt deserving all or nearly all the 
scorn and contempt which they found. The parables in this chapter are 
spoken to justify his conduct in the matter of receiving them, not to 
unfold another and far deeper mystery — that of the calling of the Gen- 
tiles, of which during his lifetime he gave only a few hints even to his 
chosen disciples, and which for long after was a difficulty and stumbling- 
block even to them. Much more would it now have been an offence to 
the scribes and Pharisees ; to them therefore he would not needlessly 
have opened it, least of all at a time when he was seeking to reconcile 
them to his dealings, and if possible to win them also for his kingdom. 
Eoth these reasons, — first, that the parable was spoken to justify his 
reception, not of Gentiles, but of Jews ; and secondly, that the mystery 
of the Gentiles as fellow-heirs with the Jews in the covenant of promise / 
was not unfolded till a later period, and certainly not first to cavillers 
and adversaries, but to friends, — strongly recommended the latter as the 
truer interpretation. Yet will not the other therefore be rigorously ex- 
cluded ; for the parable sets forth the relations of men to God, and 
wherever those relations exist, it will find a more or less extensive appli- 
cation. It found a fulfilment, though not its primary one, in the rela- 
tions in which Jew and Gentile stood to one another and to God. Again, 
what the whole Jewish people were to the Gentile world in respect of 
superior privileges and advantages, in respect too of freedom from some 
of its worst enormities, that, within its own body, were the scribes and 

and not rather because they believe their good is there, and not in God 1 And 
how little was he really promoting holiness in this his false zeal for it : for if there 
had been a deeper depth of sin and pollution, into that no doubt the prodigal 
would have sunk, but that his sure faith in the unchanging love of his father ex- 
tricated him both from the sin in which he was, and that yet further sin into which 
he would but for that inevitably have fallen. Tell men after they have sinned 
grievously that there is for them no hope of pardon, or, which amounts to the same 
thing, give them only a dim, distant, uncertain hope of it, and you will not hinder one 
by all these precautions and warnings from squandering his goodly heritage, but 
you may hinder ten thousand poor miserable sinners that have discovered the 
wretchedness of a life apart from God, from returning to their Father's house, from 
throwing themselves on the riches of his mercy, and henceforward living, not to 
the lusts of men, but to the will of God : and every one of these that is thus kept 
at a distance will inevitably be falling from bad to worse, departing wider and 
wider from his God. It is worth while to see what motives to repentance Chrysos- 
tom (Ad Theod. Laps., 1. 7) draws from this very parable, and his yet more memor- 
able words (De Pamil. Horn. 1. 4), where among other things he says, — ovtos roivw 
6 vtbs clK6uctT'2v /jLerd rb Xovrpbv (pepei ireoSvrwv, which he proceeds to prove. Com- 
pare the exposition of the parable by St. Ambrose (De Panit., 1. 2, c. 3) against 
the Novatianists. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 319 

Pharisees to the publicans and sinners, so that here too it found its ap- 
plication. And not less within the Christian Church, — however wide 
may have been the sinner's departure from God, he may be encouraged 
to return by the example of the prodigal, who returning found yet again 
a place in his father's house, and in his father's heart. This blessed as- 
surance we win from the fact that it was sinners within tlie covenant to 
whom the Lord had regard and whom he portrayed in the younger son, 
not sinners, as Tertullian*would fain have us believe, without it. 

Of these two sons, "the younger said to his father, Give me the por- 
tion of goods thatfalleth to ??%e." His claiming of his share in this tech- 
nical, and almost legal, form* is a delicate touch, characteristic of the 
entire alienation from all home affections which has already found place 
in his heart. It is apparently too as a right that he claims it, not as a 
favor : and such a right the Lord may mean to assume that he had. 
Those authors indeed who have brought Oriental customs and manners 
in illustration of Scripture, however they may prove such a right or cus- 
tom to have existed among some nations of the East, for example, among 
the Hindoos, adduce no satisfactory proof of its having been in force 
among the Jews.f But we need not conceive of the younger son as ask- 
ing this his portion of goods as a right — only as a favor ; " That portion 
which will hereafter fall to me, which thou designest for me at last, I 
would fain receive it now." This portion, according to the Jewish laws 
of inheritance, would be the half of what the elder brother would receive. 
(Deut. xxi. 17.) What does this request mean, when we come to give it 
its spiritual significance % It is the expression of man's desire to be 
independent of God, to be a God to himself (Gen. iii. 5), and to lay out 
his life according to his own will and for his own pleasure. It is man 
growing weary of living upon God and upon his fulness, and desiring to 
take the ordering of his life into his own hands, and believing that he 
can be a fountain of blessedness to himself.J All the subsequent sins 
of the younger son are included in this one, as in their germ, — are but 
the unfolding of this, the sin of sins. "We express the true godly feeling 

i 

* Tb i-jrifidwou pepos t^s olirias = ratam haereditatis partem ; the phrase like so 
many in Luke is classical and happily selected ; it is of no rare occurrence in good 
Greek authors. (See "Wetstein, in loc.) 

f Rosenmuller, Alte und Neue Morgenl., v. 5, p. 215. There is reference in- 
deed to something of the sort, Gen. xxv. 5, 6, where Abraham in his lifetime would 
seem to have given the main body of his possessions to Isaac, having given gifts 
also tc the sons of his concubines, evidently their portions ; for having endowed 
them with these, he sent them away. But it seems there recorded as something 
unusual — probably a wise precaution to avoid disputes after his death. 

^ Bernard observes, that it is a sign of evil augury, when this son — bonum 
incipit velle dividere, quod in commune dulcids possidetur, et habere solus, quod 
participatione non minuitur, partitione amittitur. 



320 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

which is directly opposed to " Give me my portion of goods," in our daily 
petition, a Give us this day our daily bread :" we therein acknowledge 
that we desire to wait continually upon God for the supply of our needs, 
both bodily and spiritual, that we recognize our dependence upon him 
as our true blessedness. In the earthly relationship which supplies the 
groundwork of the parable, the fact of the son first growing weary of ^ 
receiving from his father, and presently altogether quitting his father's 
house, has not the full amount of guilt which it has in the heavenly; 
though, indeed, the contempt, or slighting of the earthly relationship 
inevitably brings with it contempt, or slighting of the heavenly ; the 
former being constituted to lead us into the knowledge of the blessings 
which are laid up in the other : and where the lower is despised, the 
higher will inevitably be despised also. 

The father u divided unto them his living?* It would have little 
profited to retain him at home against his will, who had already in heart 
become strange to that home : rather he will let the young man discover, 
by bitter experience, the folly of his request. Such, at least, is the deal- 
ing of God : he has constituted man a spiritual being, that is, a being 
with a will ; and when his service no longer appears to man a perfect 
freedom, and man promises himself liberty elsewhere, he is allowed to 
make the trial,f and to discover, if needs be, by woful experience, that 
the only condition of his freedom is his cleaving unto God ; that depart- 
ing from him, he inevitably falls under the horrible bondage of his own 
lusts and of the world,! and under the tyranny of the devil. 

And now the younger son is that which he desired, 

"Lord of himself— that heritage of woe," 

as he, too, shall shortly find it. Yet though he had thus craved and 
obtained his portion, it was not till after a few days that he left his home. 
St. Bernard sees a force in this circumstance, and observes how tho 
apostasy of the heart will often precede the apostasy of the life ;§ that 
there may be an interval between them, though the last must of necessity 
sooner or later follow the first. The sinner is, indeed, pleasing himself, 

* Tbv ploy = facilitates ; so Mark xii. 44 ; Luke viii. 43 ; xxi. 4 ; and 1 John iii 
17, rbv plov rod Koa-fiov. There is this use of the word in Plato. {De Rep., 1. 3, p. 
228, Stallbaum's ed.) 

f See Chrysostom, De PazniL, Horn. 1. 4. 

% Augustine : Si hasrebis superiori, calcabis inferiora ; si autem recedas a, supe- 
riori ista tibi in supplicium convertentur. 

$ De Divers., Serm. 8 : Est autem interim homo sub se, cum propria? satisfaciens 
voluntati, necdum tamen possidetur a. vitiis et peccatis. Jam hinc vero proficisci* 
tur ad regionem longinquam, qui prius quidem separatus erat, sed necdum elonga- 
tus a patre. 



THE PRODIGAL SOK 321 

but the divergence of his will and the will of God does not immediately 
appear : soon, however, it must ; and thus it came to pass, that " not 
many days after the younger son gathered all togetlier" turned, we may 
suppose, all that fell to his share into ready money, or into valuables 
that he could easily carry with him, " and took his journey into afar 
country P By this gathering together of all and departing, seems inti- 
mated the collecting, on man's part, of all his energies and powers, with 
the deliberate determination of getting, through their help, all the grati- 
fication he can out of the world, — the open preference of the creature to 
the Creator,— the manifest turning of the back upon G-od.* The "far 
country 1 '' is a world where G-od is not.f There he "wasted" or scat- 
tered, " his substance with riotous living" — so quickly has the goffering 
which was mentioned but now, issued in a scattering, so little was it a 
gathering that deserved the name. But there is no such waster as the 
sinner. 

For a while, it may be, the supplies which the young man brought 
with him into that far land lasted ; and while this was so, he may have 
congratulated himself, and counted that he had done wisely in claiming 
liberty for himself. Even so the sinner for a while may flatter himself 
that he is doing well at a distance from God ; he discovers not all at 
once his misery and poverty: for the world has its attractions, and the 
flesh its pleasures ; his affections are not all at once laid waste, nor the 
sources of natural delight drawn dry in an instant. But this is the end 
whereunto he is more or less rapidly hastening. The time arrives when 
he has come to an end of all the satisfaction. and joy which the creature 
can give him — for it was not as a springing fountain, but a scanty cis- 
tern — and then it fares with him as with the prodigal: "when lie had 
spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be 
in want."% He, too, begins to discover that there is a great spiritual 
famine in the land where he has chosen to dwell, — a famine of truth and 
love, and of all whereby the soul of man indeed lives ; he begins to dis- 
cover his wretchedness and misery,^ and that it is an evil thing, and a 

* Cajetan : Confidentia in omnibus donis naturae et gratise animi et corporis, est 
bonorum congregatio. 

•f Augustine : Regio longinqua oblivio Dei est. Bede : Non regionibus longfe 
est quisque a Deo, sed affectibus. 

% Or rather ' : he began himself to be in want :" the famine reached even to him. 
The Yulgate has not missed the force of the uvt6s : Et ipse coepit egere. (See 
"Winer's Grammatik, p. 142.) 

§ Ambrose {Exp. in Luc, 1. 7, c. 215) : Etenim qui recedit a verbo Dei esurit, 
quia non in solo pane vivit homo, sed in omni verbo Dei : qui recedit a fonte, 
sittit : qui recedit a thesauro, eget : qui recedit a sapientia, hebetatur : qui recedit 
fe rirtute, dissolvitur. 

21 



322 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

bitter, to have forsaken the Lord his God.* (Jer. ii. 19 ; xvii. 5, 6.) Id 
the spiritual world there need be no outward distresses or calamities, 
though often there will be, bringing on this sense of famine. A man's 
outward possessions, supposing him to have such, may stand in their ful- 
ness, may go on abounding more and more, all his external helps to 
felicity may remain ; while yet in the true riches he may have run 
through all, and may be commencing " to be in want?' 1 This famine sits 
down, an unbidden guest, at rich men's tables, finds its way into kings' 
palaces. In these palaces, at those feasts, the immortal soul may be fam- 
ishing, yea, ready to "perish with hunger P 

When we see portrayed in this parable the history of the great apos- 
tasy of the heathen world from the knowledge and worship of the true 
God, as well as the departure of a single soul,f this wasting of goods will 
be exactly that which St. Paul describes, Rom. i. 19-23, as the remain- 
ing part of the chapter will exactly answer to the prodigal's joining him- 

* Thus, when a great English poet, with every thing that fortune, and rank, 
and genius could give him, — and who had laid out his whole life for pleasure and 
not for duty, — yet before he had reached half the allotted period of man, already 
•xclaimed, 

My days are in the yellow leaf, 

The flowers, the fruits, of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone— 

what are these deeply affecting words, but the confession of one, who having spent 
all, had found himself in want 1 Or again, the prodigal's misery, his sense of the 
barrenness of sin, find a yet deeper voice : — 

The fire that on my bosom preys, 

Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 
No torch is lighted at its blaze, 

A funeral pile ! 

f We are not in this early part of the parable expressly told, but from ver. 30 
we infer, that he consumed " with harlots " the living which he had gotten from his 
father. This too suits well, when we see here the history of the world's departure 
from God, since in the deep symbolical language of Scripture fornication is the 
standing image of idolatry ; they are, in fact, ever spoken of as one and the same 
sin, considered now in its fleshly, now in its spiritual, aspect. (Jer. iii. ; Ezek. xvi. 
xvii.) And as much, indeed, is implied in the £&»/ affcbras, living dissolutely, of 
ver. 13. "Ao-wtos, from a and o-c6£o>, as one who thinks he need not spare, — that he 
never will come to an end of what he has. Clemens of Alexandria gives it a 
passive signification, &ffaTos = &a'u(TTos, one who will not be spared, who is far 
from salvation, o-c6£e<rdx»', /*)) Svvafiwos = perditus of the Latins; so Passow: heillos, 
ohne Rettung verloren. Cicero has latinized the word {De Fin , 2, 8), and uses it 
of those given to prodigal luxury and excess at the table : but it also includes the 
other main lusts of the flesh ; and it affirms a depth of moral degradation, a 
desperate debauchery (a(r^Tws=aiVxpwy, Hesychius), which it may be questionable 
whether our translation has quite reached. See Suicer, s. v., and Deyling (Obss. 
Sac., v. 3, p. 435). 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 323 

self to. the citizan of the far country, and seeking to fill his belly with the 
swines' husks. The great famine of that heathen world was at its height 
when the Son of God came in the flesh : in this consisted a part, though 
of course, only a part, of the fulness of time, — the fitness of that time, 
above all other, for his appearing. The glory of the old world was fast 
fading and perishing. All childlike faith in the old religions had depart- 
ed. They were creeds outworn, unable any longer to nourish, ever so 
little, the spirit of man. The Greek philosophy had completed its pos- 
sible circle, but it had found no answer to the doubts and questionings 
which tormented humanity. " What is truth V this was the question 
which all asked, — some, indeed, in mockery, some in despair, — some 
without the desire, but all equally without the expectation, of obtaining 
an answer. 

When in this famine, the prodigal " began to be in want" for as yet 
he had but a foretaste of his coming woe, this, no doubt, was a summons 
to him to return home. But as yet his proud heart was unsubdued, his 
confidence in his own resources not altogether exhausted. The first 
judgments of God do not always tame, but the stricken sinner says, like 
Ephraim, " The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn 
stone ; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into ce- 
dars." (Isai. ix. 10; Jer. v. 3; Isai. lvii. 10; Amos iv. 6-10.) It 
was, we may suppose, in such a spirit as this that " he went and joined 
himself* to a citizen of that country] 1 — " fastened," or " pinned himself 
upon" him, as Hammond expresses it, hoping to repair his broken for- 
tunes by his help.f And here, no doubt, is meant to be set forth to us a 
deeper depth in the sinner's downward course ; a fall within a fall, — a 
more entire and self-conscious yielding of himself in heart and will to 
the service of the world. St. Bernard \ understands by the citizen of 
the far country, Satan himself or one of his angels. " That citizen I 
cannot understand as other than one of the malignant spirits, who in that 
they sin with an irremediable obstinacy, and have passed into a perma- 
nent disposition of malice and wickedness, are no longer guests and 
strangers, but citizens and abiders, in the land of sin." Yet rather I 



* So TJnger: ii<o\\-f)&V contemtim, se obtrusit; he thrust himself upon, — as in 
Latin, hserere or adhserere is often used, with something of contempt, of an inferior 
who clings to some superior, through whose help he hopes to advance his fortunes, 
— and see Suicer, s. v. KoWdofxai. But there is no contempt necessarily involved 
in the word, — it is not in the cleaving itself, but in the unworthiness of the person 
to whom he cleaves, that the contempt lies : in proof compare Rom. xii. 9, with 
1 Cor. vi. 16. 

f Theophylact : 7rpoK<fyas t^ Katc'ia. 

X De Divers., Serm. 8. So also Cajetan : Subjecit se totaliter Deemoni, qui vert 
est civis regionis peccati. 



324 THE PRODIGAL SOK 

should say that by the term " citizen" is brought out the distinction be- 
tween the prodigal and the lord to whom for a while he addicted himself. 
He with all his misery was not a " citizen" but a stranger, in that far 
land. He did not feel himself at home, nor naturalize himself there. 
The other was well to do ; the famine had not touched him ; herein how 
far more miserable indeed, though he knew it not, than he who " began 
to be in want" For there is hope for the sinner so long as he feels him- 
self a miserable alien in the land of sin: his case is becoming hopeless, 
when he has made himself " a citizen" there, when he is troubled with 
no longings after a lost paradise, after a better land that he has left be- 
hind. But how shall we understand his joining himself 'to the citizen of 
that far country ? The sinner sells himself to the world, he entangles 
himself more deeply in it. Our Lord gives us a hint here of that awful 
mystery in the downward progress of souls, by which he who begins by 
using the world to be a servant to minister to his pleasures, submits in 
the end to a reversing of the relationship between them, so that the 
world uses him as its drudge, and sin as its slave. He becomes cheap 
in the sight of that very world for the sake of which he has forfeited all. 
Its good wine, which it offered him at the first, it offers him no more, but 
now that he has well drunk, that which is worse. 

It was small help that the young man found from the new master on 
whom he had thrust himself. Sinful man finds no mercy from his fellow- 
sinner, no love, no pity. " All thy lovers have forsaken thee," this is 
the doom of each soul that breaks faith with its heavenly bridegroom. 
(Cf. Ezek. xvi. 37 ; xxiii. 22-25.) This new master cared not whether 
he had him or no — and if he must needs engage him, who so crouches 
to him for a morsel of bread (1 Sam. ii. 36), he will dismiss him out of 
sight, and send him to the meanest and vilest employment which he has ; 
u He sent him into his fields to feed swine." We might easily guess, and 
indeed we know, how exceedingly vile and degrading, and even accursed, 
this employment was esteemed in the eyes of a Jew ; # so that misery 
would seem to have come upon him to the uttermost. And now " he 
would fain have filled his belly with the husks \ that tlie swine did eat ; 



* See Lightfoot's Ho?: Heb., on Matt. viii. 30; and Geforer's Urchristenthum, 
v. 1, p. 115. Herodotus (1. 2, c. 47) describes the swineherds as the only persons 
who -were excluded from the temples of Egypt. 

t These Kepdria are not the husks or pods of some other fruit, but themselves 
the fruit of the carob tree (Keparavia), of which there is a good account in Winer's 
Real. Wortcrbucn, s. v. Johannis Brodtbaum. This name of St. John's bread the 
tree derives from the tradition that the Baptist fed upon its fruit in the wilderness. 
I have seen and tasted them in Calabria, where they are very abundant, and being 
sold at a very low price are sometimes eaten by the poorer people, but are mainly 
used for the feeding domestic animals. They are also common in Spain, and stil! 



THE PRODIGAL SOK 325 

and no man gave unto him.'''' Shall we understand that he was reduced 
so bw as to look with a longing eye upon these swine's husks, but that 
a share even of these which he distributed to them, was withholden from 
himself? — a no man gave unto him" of these ; — so the passage is gene- 
rally taken.* But seeing they must have been in his power.f it seems 
preferable to understand that in his unscrupulous hunger he was glad 
to fill himself with these husks, and did so, no man giving him any no- 
bler sustenance. J With these he would fain have "filled his belly ; § 
— the expression is chosen of design — all he could hope from them was 
just this, to dull his gnawing pain — not that he should with them truly 
satisfy his hunger, for the food of beasts could not appease the cravings 
of man. Thus a deepest moral truth lies under the words, — that none 
but God can satisfy the longing of an immortal soul, — that as the heart 
was made for him, so he only can fill it. 

The whole description is wonderful, and for nothing more than the 
evident relation in which his punishment stands to his sin. " He who 
would not, as a son, be treated liberally by his father, is compelled to be 
the servant and bondslave of a foreign master, — he who would not be 
ruled by God, is compelled to serve the devil, — he who would not abide 
in his father's royal palace, is sent to the field among hinds, — he who 
would not dwell among brethren and princes, is obliged to be the servant 
and companion of brutes, — he who would not feed on the bread of angels, 
petitions in his hunger for the husks of the swine." || In his feeding of 

more so on the northern coasts of Africa, and in the Levant. They are in shape 
something like a "bean-pod. though larger, and curved more into the form of a 
t ickle ; thence called Kepdnov, or little horn, and the tree sometimes in German, 
Bockshornbaum. They have a dark hard outside, and a dull sweet taste, hardly, 
I think, justifying Pliny's prcedulces siliquas. The shell or pod alone is eaten ; wine 
was sometimes expressed from it in ancient times ; Robinson mentions when steep- 
ed in water they afford a pleasant drink : the fruit within is bitter and cast aside. 
Maldonatus gives an accurate account of the Ktpwriov, and see Pole's Synopsis (in 
loc.) and Rosenmuller's Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 198. 

* Thus Luther : Und niemand gab sie ihm. Bernard (De Confers., c. 8) : Meri- 
t& siliquas esuriit, et non accepit, qui porcos pascere maluit, quam paternis epulis 
satiari. 

f Calvin : Significat pras fame non amplius cogitasse veteres delicias, sed avide 
vorasse siliquas : neque enim cum porcis ipse daoet hoc cibi genus, carere potuit, . . . 
Additur ratio, quia nemo illi dabat, nam copula in causalem particulam, meo judicio, 
resolvi debet. 

^ Or the words koI oi>8eU iSlSov avrca may be a new and the final touch in the 
picture of his misery, and express generally that there was none that showed any 
pity upon him. 

() T^fjLLa-ai tt\v KoiKlav. Stella : Hominem non satiant, sed ventrem tantum gra- 
tant; and Ambrose {Exp. in Luc., 1. 7, c. 227): Cibus . . . quo corpus non reficituf 
Bed impletur. Augustine : Pascebatur de siliquis, non satiabatur. 

|| Corn, h Lapide. 



326 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

swine, what a picture have we of man " serving divers lusts and plea« 
sures," — in whom the divine is totally obscured, — the bestial merely pre- 
dominant. And in his fruitless attempt to fill his belly with the husks, 
what a picture, again, of man seeking through the unlimited gratification 
of his appetites, to appease the fierce hunger of his soul. But in vain, 
for still "he enlarges his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be 
satisfied :" since as well might one hope to quench a fire by adding fuel 
to it, as to slake desire by gratifying it.* (Ezek. xvi. 28, 29.) And 
the further misery is that the power of sinful gratifications to stay that 
hunger even for the moment, is ever diminishing, — the pleasure which is 
even hoped for from them still growing fainter, and yet the goad behind, 
urging to seek that pleasure, still becoming fier /er, — the sense of the horri- 
ble nature of the bondage ever increasing, with the power of throwing off 
that bondage ever diminishing.! All the monstrous luxuries and fran- 
tic wickednesses which we read of in the later Roman history, at that 
close of the world's Pagan epoch, stand there like the last despairing 
effort of man to fill his belly with the husks. J The attempt by her em- 
perors was carried out under all the most favorable circumstances of 
wealth and power, for, in Solomon's words, u what can the man do that 
cometh after the king ?" In this light we may behold the incredibly 
sumptuous feasts. — the golden palaces, — the enormous shows and specta- 
cles, — and all the pomp and pride of life carried to the uttermost,^ — the 
sins of nature, and the sins below nature ; while yet from amidst all 
these the voice of man's misery only made itself the louder heard. The 
experiment carried out on this largest scale, only caused the failure to be 
more signal, only proved the more plainly that of the food of beasts there 
could not be made the nourishment of men. 



* Jerome (Ad Dam., Ep. 21, c. 13) : Non poterat, saturari quia semper voluptas 
famem sui habet, et transacta non satiat : and Bernard, though elsewhere he has 
affirmed the other, yet brings out this interpretation also on its ethical side (Da 
Convcrs., c. 14): Neque enim parit hanc [satietatem] copia sed contemptus. Sic 
fatui fllii Adam, porcorum vorando siliquas, non esurientes animas sed esuriem 
ipsam pascitis animarum. Sola nimirum hoc edulio inedia vestra nutritur, sola 
fames alitur cibo innaturali. 

•j- Cajetan : Quieto siquidem dominio jam possidentes Daemones hominem, in- 
vident illi satietatem appetitus, quam tamen procurabant quosque ilium plene sibi 
subjecerunt. Compare a passage from the Tabula of Cebes, quoted by Mr. Gres- 
wcll. (Exp. of the Par., v. 3, p. 586.) 

$ The explanation which Augustine gives is not virtually different from this. 
The husks he explains : Seculares doctrinae steriles, vanitate resonantes ; such as 
bad been to himself once his own Manichasan figments. Compare Jerome (Ad 
Dam., Ep. 21, c. 13), and H. de Sto. Victore : Sordida figmenta poetarum, et dU 
versis erroribus polluta dogmata philosophorum. 

$ See, for instance, Suetonius, Caligula, c. 19. 37. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 327 

It might be here, perhaps, said, that the picture drawn in the para« 
ble, if it be applied to more than a very few, the deepest sunk in depra- 
vity, is an exaggeration both of the misery and also of the wickedness 
even of those who have turned their backs upon God ; that, in the most 
corrupted times, not all, and in more moral epochs only a few even of 
these, fall so low in wretchedness and guilt. This is true, yet all might 
thus fall. By the first departure from God, all this misery, and all this 
sin, are rendered possible — all are its legitimate results ; there is nothing 
to hinder them from following, except the mercy and restraining grace 
of God, who does not suffer sin, in all cases, to bear all the bitter fruit 
which it might, and which are implicitly contained in it. In the pre- 
sent case, it is suffered to bear all its bitter fruit : we have one who has 
done " evil with both hands earnestly," and debased himself even unto 
hell ; and the parable would be incomplete without this, it would not 
be a parable for all sinners, since it would fail to show, that there is 
no extent of departure from God, which renders a return to him impos- 
sible. 

Hitherto we have followed the sinner step by step in a career, which 
is ever carrying him further and further from his God. Another task 
remains — to trace the steps of his return, from the first beginnings of 
repentance to his full reinvestment in all the rights and privileges of a 
son. Eor though he has forsaken his God, he has not been forsaken by 
him — no not even in that far land ; for the misery which has fallen upon 
him there is indeed an expression of God's anger against sin, but at the 
same time of his love to the sinner. He hedges up his way with thorns, 
that he may not find his paths (Hos. ii. 6) ; he makes his sin bitter to 
him, that he may leave it. In this way God pursues his fugitives, sum- 
moning them back in that only language which now they will under- 
stand.* He allows the world to make its bondage hard to them, that 
they may know the difference between his service, and the service of 
the kings of the countries (2 Chron. xii. 8), that those whom he is about 
to deliver may cry to him by reason of the bitter bondage, and in that 
cry give him something that he may take hold of. (Deut. iv. 29-31 ; 
2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-13.) Here we have one upon whom this severe 
but loving discipline is not wasted.f Presently, "lie came to himself P\ 
How full of consolation for man, how deeply significant are these words, 
* he came to himself" — so that to come to one's self and to come to God, 



* Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3, 4. 

t Augustine : Divinse misericord ise severa disciplina. 

X How remarkable a parallel the words of Seneca (Ep. 53) supply : Quare vitia 
sua nemo confitetur 1 quia etiani nunc in illis est. Somnium narrare, vigilantis est, 
et yitia sua confiteri, sanitatis indicium. 



328 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

are one and the same thing. He being the true ground of our being 
when we find ourselves we find him ; or rather, because we have found 
him, we find ourselves also.* It is not then the man living in union 
with G-od who is raised above the true condition of humanity, but the 
man not so living, who has fallen out of and fallen below that con- 
dition. 

When he thus u came to himself ] he said, How many hired servants of 
my fathers have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger? 1 
This too is a touch of the deepest nature ; for there is nothing that so 
eauses the sinner to feel the discord which he has introduced into his 
innermost being, as to compare himself with all things around and be- 
neath him. He sees the happy animals undisturbed with his longings, 
unable to stain themselves with his sins ; he beholds all natuie calm and 
at rest, and fulfilling in law and in order the purposes for which it was 
ordained. Every where, peace and joy — he only condemned the mean 
while 

" To be a jarring and dissonant thing 
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy." 

He sees also many of his fellow-men, who without any very lofty views 
concerning living to the glory of God, — without any very lively affec- 
tions towards him, do yet find their satisfaction in the discharge of their 
daily duties, who, though they do his work rather in the spirit of ser- 
vants than of sons, rather looking to their hire than out of the free im- 
pulse "of love, are yet not without their reward. It is true, they may 
not have the highest joy of his salvation, or consolations of his grace, 
but, on the other hand, they are far from the misery and destitution into 
which he has sunk. They at least have bread enough and to spare : 
while he is tormented with the fierce hunger of desires which are ever 
craving, but which can never be satisfied.! 

Comparing his state with theirs, what does the prodigal determine 
now? How many, even at this point, do not determine as he does. 
They betake them to some other citizen of that far country, who pro- 
mises them a little better fare or less contemptuous treatment. Or it 

* See Augustine, Serm. 96, c. 2. 

f This, in the main, is the interpretation of these words by the Fathers. See 
Jerome (Ad Dam., Ep. 21, c. 14), Ambrose (Exp. in Ialc., 1. 7, c. 220), and Bernard 
(De Divers. Serm. 8) : Quis enim peccati consuetudine obligatus, non se felicem 
reputaret, si datum esset ei esse tanquam unum ex his, quos in seculo tepidos 
videt, viventes sine crimine, minime tamcn quierentes quae sursum sunt, sed quae 
super terram 1 In proof that this distinction between the filial and the gerrile 
work was cbarly recognized among the Jews, see Schoettgen's Hot. Heb., t. 1, 
pp. 260, 532. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 329 

may be they learn to dress their husks, so that they shall look like hu- 
man food, and they then deny that they are the fodder of swine. Or 
glorying in their shame, and wallowing in the same sty with the beasts 
they feed, they proclaim that there was never intended to be any differ- 
ence between the food of men and of swine. But it is otherwise with him. 
" I 'will arise."* We may picture him to ourselves as having sat long 
upon the ground, revolving the extreme misery of his condition — for the 
earth becomes the natural throne of the utterly desolate. (Job ii. 8, 13.) 
But now he gathers up anew his prostrate energies, as a bettei hope 
wakens in his bosom ; " Why sit I here among the swine ? I will 
arise and go to my father" These words the Pelagians of old ad- 
duced, in proof that man could turn to Glod in his own strength,! — 
that he needed not a drawing from above, that the good thought was 
his own ; just as the (self-styled) Unitarians of modern times find 
in the circumstances of the prodigal's return, a proof that the sin- 
ner's repentance alone is sufficient to reconcile him with his God, — 
that he needs not a Mediator and Sacrifice. But these conclusions are 
sufficiently guarded against by innumerable clearest declarations, the 
first by such as John vi. 44 ; the second by such passages as Heb. x. 19- 
22 ; nor are we to expect that every passage in Scripture is to contain 
the whole circle of Christian doctrine, but the different portions of truths 
being gathered by the Church out of the different parts of Scripture, are 
by her presented to her children in their due proportions and entire 
completeness. 

Returning to that father, he "tvill say unto him, Father" — for as 
that relation was one which his obedience has not constituted, so his 
disobedience could not annul. And what is it that gives the sinner now 
a sure ground of confidence, that returning to God he shall not be 
repelled or cast out % The adoption of sonship, which he received in 
Christ Jesus at his baptism, and his faith that the gifts and calling of 
God are on his part without repentance or recall. For the recollection 
of his baptism is not to him as a menacing angel, keeping with a fiery 
sword the gates of that Paradise which he has forfeited, and to which he 
now vainly desires admission again ; but there he finds consolation and 
strength ; — he too, wretched and degraded though he be, may yet take 
that dearest name of Father on his lips, and claim anew his admission 
into the household of faith, on the ground that he was once made a mem- 
ber thereof, and that his privileges abide for him still in their full force, 



* Augustine : Surgam, dixit — sederat enim. 

f But Augustine says in reply (Ep. 186) : Quam cogitationem bonam quando 
haberet, nisi et ipsam illi in occulto Pater misericordissimus inspirasset 1 Cf. 
Enarr. in Ps. lxxvii. 39. 



330 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

however lie may have chosen to remain in guilty ignorance of them foi 
so long. " I have sinned against heaven and before thee ;" he recognizes 
his offence to have been committed not merely against man, hut against 
heaven, or against God : he shows his repentance to have been divinely 
wrought, a work of the Spirit, in that he acknowledges his sin in its 
root, as a transgression of the divine law, as exceedingly sinful, being 
wrought against God. Thus David, when he exclaims, " Against thee, 
thee only have I sinned ;" while yet his offences had been against the 
second table. For we may injure ourselves by our evil, we may wrong 
our neighbor, but strictly speaking, we can sin only against God ; and 
the recognition of our evil as first and chiefly an offence against him, is 
of the essence of all true repentance, and distinguishes it broadly from 
many other kinds of sorrow which may follow on evil deeds. When we 
come to give these words their higher application, the two acknowledg- 
ments, " 1 have sinned against heaven, and before thee? merge into one, 
" I have sinned against thee, my Father in heaven." Not here alone, 
but throughout all Scripture, this willingness to confess is ever noted as 
a sign of a true repentance begun, even as the sinner's refusal to humble 
himself in confession before God, is the sure note of a continued obdura- 
cy. (2 Sam. xii. 13; Job ix. 20; xxxi. 33; xxxiii. 27; Prov. xxviii. 
' 13 ; Jer. ii. 35.; xvi. 10 ; Hos. xiv. 2 ; 1 John i. 9, 10.) In Augustine's 
words, " He shows himself worthy, in that he confesses himself un- 
worthy."* 

With this deep feeling of his unworthiness, he will confess that he 
has justly forfeited all which once was his : " lam no more worthy to be 
called thy son" This is well, and a confession such as this belongs to 
the essence of all true repentance. But the words that follow,! " Make 
me as one of thy hired servants? are these the words of returning spirit- 
ual health, so that we should desire to meet them in each normal repent- 
ance, or not % We shall find that at a later period he drops them (ver. 
21), and shall then have something more to say about them. A scholar 



* And again : Esto accusator tuus, et ille erit indultor tuus ; cf. Enarr. in Ps. 
xxxi. 5. Tertullian, in his treatise De Pcenitentia (c. 9, 10), has many useful 
remarks, in connection with this parable, on the benefit of unreserved confession : 
Tanttim relevat confessio delictorum quantiim dissimulatio exaggerat. Confessio 
enim satisfactionis consilium est, dissimulatio, contumacise. . . In quantum non 
peperceris tibi, in tantum tibi Deus, crede, parcet. The whole treatise breathes a 
far different spirit from that in which the other above referred to, De Pudicitia, is 
written ; and yet is most useful, as showing us how far more serious and earnest a 
„hing repentance was accounted in the early Church, than it is commonly now, how 
much more it linked itself with outward self-denials and humiliations. 

t Cajetan : Non audebo petere redintegrationem in statum filii, in pristina dona 
grandia : sed petam dona incipientium, qui amore aeternae mercedis serviunt Deo. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 33i 

of St. Bernard's here exclaims : " Keep, happy sinner, keep watch- 
fully and carefully this thy most just feeling of humility and devotion: 
by which thou mayest ever esteem the same of thyself in humility, of 
the Lord in goodness. Than it there is nothing greater in the gifts of 
the Holy Spirit, nothing more precious in the treasures of God, nothing 
more holy among all graces, nothing more wholesome among [all] sacra- 
ments. Keep, I say, if thou wilt thyself be kept, the humility of that 
speech and feeling, with which thou confessest to thy Father, and sayest, 
' Father, I am no more worthy to be called thy son.' For humility is of 
all graces the chiefest, even while it does not know itself to be a grace at 
all. From it they begin, by it they advance, in it they are consummated, 
through it they are preserved."* But it is wholly against the spirit of 
this parable, when he exhorts him still to persist in taking the place of 
a servant, even after his father shall have bidden him to resume the po- 
sition of a son. This is that false humility of which we find so much, 
and which often is so mightily extolled, in monkery, but of which we find 
nothing in this parable, nor elsewhere in the Scriptures. It is true hu- 
mility when bidden to go up higher, to go.- It was true humility in Peter 
to suffer the Lord to wash his feet, as it would have been false humility, 
as well as disobedience, to resist longer than he did : it was true humil- 
ity of the prodigal, when his father would have it so, to accept at once* 
the place of a son. 

There is no tarrying now ; what he has determined to do, at once 
he does ; being about to prove how much larger are the riches of grace, 
which are laid up with his father, than he had dared to hope ; " He 
arose, and came to his fatlier ; but when he was yet a great way off, his 
fatJier saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck (Gen. 
xlv. 14; xlvi. 29; Job xi. 9), and kissed him" The evidences of the 
father's love are described with a touching minuteness ; he does not wait 
for the poor returning wanderer till he has come all the way, but him- 
self hastens forward to meet him ; he does not wear at first an aspect of 
severity, only after a season to be relaxed or laid aside, but at once wel- 
comes him with the kiss, which is something more than an evidence of 
affection, being the significant, and in the East well understood, pledge 
of reconciliation,and peace. (Gen. xxxiii. 4 ; 2 Sam. xiv. 33 ; Ps. ii. 
12.) It is thus the Lord draws nigh unto them that draw nigh unto 
himf (Jam. iv. 8), he sees them while they are " yet a great way off." 



* Guerricus, in a singularly beautiful sernion in the Bened. edit, of St. Bernard, 
t. 2, p. 986 : Humilitas siquidem omnium virtutum est maxima, cum tamen virtu- 
tem se esse nesciat : ab ipsa incipiunt, per ipsam proficiunt, in ipsa consummantur, 
per ipsara conservantur. 

t Thus there is an Eastern proverb, If man draws near to God an inch, God 



332 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

It was he who put within them even the first weak notions toward good ; 
— and as his grace prevented them, so also it meets them ; — he listens 
to the first faint sighings of their hearts after him, for it was he that first 
awoke those sighings there, (Ps. x. 17.) And though they may be 
" yet a great way off" though there may be very much of ignorance in 
them still, far too slight a view of the evil of their sin, or of the holiness 
of the God with whom they have to deal, yet he meets them, notwith- 
standing, with the evidences of his mercy and reconciled love. Neither 
makes he them first to go through a dreary apprenticeship of servile fear 
at a distance from him, but at once embraces them in the arms of his 
love, giving them at this first moment strong consolations, perhaps 
stronger and more abounding than afterwards, when they are settled in 
their Christian course, they will oftentimes receive. And this he does, 
because such they need at this moment, to assure them that notwith- 
standing their moral loathsomeness and defilement and misery, they are 
accepted in Christ Jesus, to convince them of that which it is so hard 
for the sinner to believe, which it is indeed the great work of faith to 
realize, that God has put away their sin, and is pacified toward them. 

But the returning son, though thus graciously received, though his 
sin is not mentioned against him at all, yet not the less makes the con- 
fession which he had determined in his heart, when the purpose of 
returning was first conceived. And this was fitting ; for though God may 
forgive, man is not therefore to forget. Nor should we fail to note that 
it is after, and not before, the kiss of reconciliation, that this confession 
finds place ; for the more the sinner knows and tastes of the love of G-od, 
the more he grieves ever to have sinned against that love. It is under 
the genial rays of this kindly love, that the heart, which was before 
bound up as by a deadly frost, begins to thaw and to melt and loosen, 
and the waters of repentance to flow freely forth. The knowledge of 
God's love in Christ is the cruse of salt which alone can turn the bitter 
and barren-making streams of remorse into the healing waters of "repent- 
ance. And thus the truest and best repentance follows, and does not 
precede, the sense of forgiveness ; and thus too will repentance be a 
thing of the whole life long, for every new insight into that forgiving 
love, is as a new reason why we should mourn that, we ever sinned 
against it. It is a mistake to affirm that men, those I mean in whom 
there is a real spiritual work going forward, will lay aside their repent- 
ance, so soon as they are convinced of the forgiveness of their sins, and 

will draw near to him an ell; or as Von Hammer (Fund. d. Orients, v. 4, p. 91) 
gives it : 

Wer sich mir eine Sparine weit naht, dem eile ich eine Elle Iang entgegen, 
Und wer mir gehend entgegen kBmmt, dem cile ich in Spriingen zu. 



THE PRODIGAL SOX. 333 

that therefore, — since repentance, deep, earnest, long-continued, self- 
mortifying repentance, is a good thing, as indeed it is, — the longer men 
can be kept in suspense concerning their forgiveness the better, as in 
this way a deeper foundation of repentance will be laid. This is surely 
a wrong view of the relations in which repentance and forgiveness stand 
to each other ; and their true relation is rather opened to us in such pas- 
sages as Ezek. xxxvi. 31, where the Lord says, " Tlien" (and for what 
that then means, see ver. 24-30 : then, after I have cleansed you, — after 
I have given you a new heart, — after I have heaped all my richest bless- 
ings upon you, then under the sense of these) " shall ye remember your 
own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe 
yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations." 
Compare Ezek. xvi. 60-63, where the Lord. declares he has established 
his covenant with Judah for the very purpose "that thou mayest 
remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more be- 
cause of thy shame, when lam pacified toward tlwe for all that thou 
liast done." The younger son, while he has the clearest evidence that 
his father is pacified toward him, does not the less confess his shame. 
He does not indeed say all that he had once intended, — he does not say, 
u Make me as one of thy hired servants ;" for this was the one troubled 
element of his repentance, this purpose of shrinking back from his 
father's love, and from the free grace which would restore to him all : 
and in his dropping of these words, in his willingness to be blest by his 
father to the uttermost, if such is his father's pleasure, there is beautiful 
evidence that the grace which he has already received he has not received 
in vain. Bengel thinks it possible that his father cut him short, and so 
took these words out of his mouth, but has also suggested the truer ex- 
planation.* 

And now the father declared plainly in act, that he meant to give 
him a place and a name in his house once more ; for he " said to his 
servants, Bring forth tlie best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on 
his hand and shoes on his feet" these all being the ornaments, not of the 
slave, but of the free ;f all, therefore, speaking of restoration to his 



* Bengel : Vel quod ex obvii patris comitate accensa filialis fiducia onmeni ser- 
vilem sensum absorberet, vel quod patris comitas sermonem filii abrumperet. So 
Augustine (Quast. Eva?ig., 1. 2, qu. 33) : Cum enim panem non haberet, vel mer- 
cenarius esse cupiebat ; quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur. 

* Tbus Tertullian (De Rcsur. Cam., e. 57) speaking of the manumitted slave : 
Vesiis alba nitore, et aurei annuh honore, et patroni nomine ac tribu racnsaqiie hono- 
ratur. Grotius : AanrvAtov apud Romanos ingenuitatis, apud Orientes populoa 
dignitatis eximiae signum, aut etiam opulentise. (Jac. ii. 2.) He might have 
added Gen. xli. 42. Cf. Elsner, in the Biblloth. Brcm., v. 3, p. 906 ; and for the 
significance of the ring, the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt,, s. v. Rings, p. 824. 



334 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

former dignity, and his lost privileges. Or if we cannot suppose the 
Roman customs which accompanied the lifting up of a slave to a free- 
man's rank, to have been familiarly known in Palestine, or to be here 
alluded to, yet the giving of the robe and ring were e^er accounted, in 
the East, among the highest tokens of favor and honor (Gen. xli. 42 ; 
1 Mace. vi. 15) ; so that, in fact, these words would still testify of highest 
blessings and chiefest favors in store for him who had most justly con- 
fessed that he had forfeited his claim to the least of these. 

Few interpreters, even among those who commonly are most opposed 
to the giving a spiritual meaning to the minuter circumstances of a para- 
ble, have been able to resist the temptation of doing so here ; and there 
is a pretty general agreement concerning the manner in which these cir- 
cumstances shall be explained. There is a question, however, whether 
" the first robe " is to be understood as the first in worth, as our transla- 
tion has it, " the best robe" the most excellent that was laid up in the 
house, — or " the former* robe" that which he wore when of old he walked 
a son in his father's house, and which has been kept for him, and was 
now to be restored. The difference is not important, though our trans- 
lation is clearly the right ; nor whether we say that by the giving of this 
robe is signified the imputation to him of the righteousness of Christ,^ 
or the restoration of sanctity to his soul. If we see in it his reintegra- 
tion in his baptismal privileges, then both will be implied. They who 
briDg forth the robe have been generally interpreted as the ministers of 
reconciliation ; and if we may imagine them first to have removed from 
him, as they would naturally have done, the tattered garments, the poor 
swineherd's rags which were hanging about him, Zech. iii. 4 will then 
suggest to us an interesting parallel. Those who stood before the Lord 
there, would answer to the servants here, — and what they did for Joshua 
there, removing his filthy garments from him, and clothing him with a 
change of raiment, and setting a fair mitre on his head, the same would 
the servants do here for the son, with the difference only that instead of 
the mitre, the appropriate adornment there of the high priest, the ring 

* The Yulgate: Stolam primara. Tertullian: Vestem pristinam, priorem. 
Theophylact : T^v aroX^v tV apxalav— but rather, Stolam illam prsestantissimam ; 
as Euthymius : t\v rifiLccTaT^u. Cf. Gen. xxvii. 15. LXX. TV crroAV t 'V KaX-fjv. 
There need no quotations to prove how often irp£>Tos is used in this sense of the 
chiefest, the most excellent (see 1 Chron. xxvii. 33; Ezek. xxvii. 22, LXX). 
Passow, s. v., der vornehmste, angesehenste. The croX-h is the vestis talaris, the 
long and wide upper garment of the higher classes. (Mark xxii. 38.) 

t Tertullian : Indumentum Spiritus Sancti. Jerome : Stolam qu$e in alia para- 
bola indumentum dicitur nuptiale. Augustine : Stola prima est dignitas quam 
perdidit Adam ; and in another place, spes immortalitatis in baptismo. Theophy- 
lact : Tb ivlvpa. ttjj aty&apclas. Guerricus : Sancti ficationem Spiritus, qua baptiza* 
tos induitur ct poenitens reinduitur. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 335 

and the shoes are here mentioned ; and the symbolic act has in each 
case, no doubt, the same signification ; what that is, the Lord theie ex- 
pressly declares — " Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from 
thee." These words, brought to bear on the passage before us, make it, 
I think, more probable that by this bringing out of the best robe, and 
putting it upon him, is especially signified that act of God, which, con- 
sidered on its negative side, is a release from condemnation, a causing 
the sinner's iniquity to pass from him, — on its positive side, is an impu- 
tation to him of the merits and righteousness of Christ. 

This explanation, for other reasons also, is preferable, since we have 
the gift or restoration of the Spirit indicated in the ring with which the 
returning wanderer is also adorned. It is well known, and despite Pli- 
ny's* denial is unquestionable, that in the East, as with us, the ring was 
also often a sealf (Esth. iii. 10, 13; Jer. xxii. 24), which naturally 
brings here to our minds such passages as Ephes. i. 13, 14; 2 Cor. i. 
22, in which a sealing by God's Spirit is spoken of, whereby they that 
have it are assured, as by an earnest, of a larger inheritance one day 
coming to them, and which witnesses with their spirits that they are the 
sons of God. (Gal. iv. 6 ; Rom. viii. 23 ; 2 Cor. v. 5.) The ring, too, 
may be the pledge of betrothal :% " And I will betroth thee unto me for 
ever : yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judg- 
ment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies, and I will even betroth thee 
unto me in faithfulness ; and thou shalt know the Lord." (Hos. ii. 19, 
20. §) The shoes also are given him, to which answers the promise, " I 
will strengthen «them in the Lord, and they shall walk up and down in 
his name." (Zech. x. 12.) The penitent shall be equipped for holy 
obedience. |j having his "feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of 



* H. N., 1. 33, c. 6. Speaking of the seal-ring, he says : Non signat Oriens aut 
JEgyptus etiam nunc, litteris contenta solis. The later discoveries have shown this 
as false concerning Egypt as the East; see moreover Herod., 1. 2, c. 38. 

f Clem. Alex. (Potter's ed., p. 1017) : '%-r\\j.avTpov fiatriXinhv Kai ccppa^ida &e(av, 
and presently after, airoa^payiafxa S&fts. The fragment whence these words are 
taken, is interesting in many respects ; — and among others in this, that the author, 
whether Clement or another, affirms of the prodigal that he had not merely wasted 
the natural gifts of God, but especially abused tw rod fiairrifrfxaTos f/|<«ueV«» 
KaXuv. 

£ Ambrose (De PamiL, 1. 2, c. 3) : Det annulum in manu ejus, quod est fidei 
pignus, et Sancti Spirittis signaculum. 

§ The whole chapter affords deeply interesting parallels : ver. 5 (the latter part) 
answering to ver. 11, 12 here; ver. 6-13 there to 13-19 here; and ver. 14-23 to 
20-24. 

|| Guerricus : Calceamenta, quibus ad calcanda serpentum venena munitur, vel 
ad evangelizandum praeparatur. Grotius, quoting Ephes. vi. 15, adds. Nimirum 
pcenitentibus in gratiam receptis etiam hoc Deus concedit, ut apti sint aliis aut 



336 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

peace." (Ephes. vi. 15.) No strength shall "be wanting to him. (Deut. 
xxxiii. 25.) "When it is added, " Bring hither the fatted calf* and kill 
it. v it would create a confusion of images, again to go back to the sacri- 
fice of Christ, which was implicitly contained in the first image, that of 
the giving of the robe, and which, moreover, is not a consequence of the 
sinner's return, as the killing of the fatted calf is the consequence of 
the prodigal's, but the ground which renders that return possible f Noi 
should I here see (with Tertullianf and Clement of Alexandria) spe- 
cial allusion to the Eucharist, but more generally to the festal joy anG 
rejoicing which is in heaven at the "sinner's return, and no less in the 
Church on earth, and "in his own heart also.§ 

As in the preceding parables the shepherd summons his friends (ver. 
6), and the woman her female neighbors (ver. 9), so here the house- 
holder his servants, to be sharers in his joy. For this is the very na- 
ture of true joy — that it runs over, that it desires to impart itself: and 
if this be true of the joy on earth, how much more of the yet holier joy 
in heaven. || And summoning them to rejoice, he declares to them the 
ground of the joy in which they are invited to share. In an earthly 
household, we might naturally conclude some to have made part of the 
household now, who had not made part at the time of the young man's 
departure. To them, therefore, it was needful to declare that this wan- 
derer, this beggar as it seemed, was no other than a son of the house, 
one who should henceforth be by them treated and regarded as such. 

voce aut certe exemplo docendis, and quotes -well Ps. li. 13, in this view. And see 
Clemens Alex. (Potter's ed., p. 1018) for much that is beautiful and something that 
is fanciful on these shoes, — though the virod^fiara were probably rather sandals 
than shoes, the latter being in very rare use in the East. The word is used in- 
terchangeably with o-avddkia, by the LXX., though there is a distinction. (See 
Tittmann's Synonyms, and the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt. s. v. Sandalium, p. 
839.) Much luxury Avas often displayed among the wealthy in this article of dress 
(see Judith xvi. 9; Ezek. xvi. 10; Cant. vii. 1), so that we can easily understand 
why they should have been especially mentioned ; not to say that slaves usually 
went discalceati. 

* Tbu fi6axov rbv <rirev6v. Cf. Judg. vi. 25 (LXX.) ; TertuHijan : Vitul'im prae- 
opimum— that set by for some special occasion of festal rejoicing. In the Geneva 
version, " that fatted calf." 

f Augustine evades this difficulty : Tunc enim cuique [Christus] occiditur cilm 
credit occisum. 

$ De Pudic, c. 9. 

§ Arndt {De Vero Christ., 1. 2, c. 8) : Hoc convivium innuit gaudium angelo- 
rum, sive vhificantem, l&tific&ntem, et coronantem misericordiam quam Ps. lxiiL 5 ; 
Jes. lxvi. 13, depingit. 

|| Origen {Horn. 23 in Lev.) on the words " My feasts," which there occurs, 
asks : Habet ergo Deus dies festos suos 1 Habet. Est enim ei magna festivitas 
humana salus. 



THE PRODIGAL SOJNT. 337 

The father solemnly reinstates him, before them all, in the honors of a 
son. " This my son," he says — and then, comparing the present with 
the past, u icas dead, and is alive again" — u dead," iox the state of sin is 
ever considered in Scripture as a state of death — (1 John iii. 14; 1 
Tim. v. 6 ; Ephes. ii. 1) — " he was lost, and is found" — compare 1 Pet 
ii. 25 : u Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the 
shepherd and bishop of your souls ;" and while thus the lost was found, 
and the dead alive, '• tliey began to be me?ry." 

Here this parable, like the two preceding, might have ended. But 
our Lord at ver. 1 1 saying " tivo sons" had promised something more ; 
and complete as is this first part within itself, yet is it also to form part 
of another and more complex whole, and to derive new beauty from the 
contrast which is thus brought out between the large heart of G-od and 
the narrow grudging heart of man. For the purposes of this contrast 
the elder brother, who as yet has been named to us, and no more, is now 
brought upon the scene. He, while the house is ringing with the festal 
rejoicing, returns from " tlie field" where, no doubt, he had been, as 
usual, laboriously occupied ; so much is implied in the words ; and it is 
not without good reason that this intimation is given us. For thus we 
are informed that while the other had been wasting time and means and 
strength, — his whole portion, of goods. — in idle and sinful pleasures 
abroad, he had been engaged at home, on his father's ground, in pursuits 
of useful industry. This is not a justification, but yet is a tacit expla- 
nation, of the complaints which he presently thinks himself entitled to 
make. As he " drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing" 
It would be alien to the manners and feelings of the East, to suppose 
the guests themselves to have been engaged in these diversions : they 
would but be listeners and spectators, the singers and dancers being 
hired for such occasions. Surprised at these unaccustomed sounds, a lie 
called one of tlie servants and asked what these things meant." Let us 
note here with what delicate touches the ungenial character of the man 
is indicated already. He does not go in ; he does not take for granted 
that when his father makes a feast, there is matter worthy of making 
merry about. But, as if already determined to mislike what is going 
forward, he prefers to remain without, and to learn from a servant the 
occasion of the joy, or rather, as he puts it, "ivhat these things meant" 
demanding an explanation, as if they required it. And then the tidings 
that his father had received his brother u safe and sound, "* with the 



* How nice is the observance of all the lesser proprieties of the narration. The 

father, in the midst of all his natural affection, is yet full of the mora) significance 

of his son's return — that he has come back another person from what he was when 

he went, or while he tarried in that far land ; he sees into the deep of his joy, that 

22 



338 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

thought of his father's joy, his brother's safety, instead of stirring up 
any gladness in his heart, move him rather to displeasure ; " he was an- 
gry" and in place of rushing to that brother's arms, "would not go in." 

Nor even when his father so far bore with him as to come out and 
entreat him, would he lay aside his displeasure, but loudly complained 
of the unfairness with which he was treated — the bounty which was be- 
stowed upon his brother's misconduct : " Lo ! these many years do 1 
serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment, and yet 
thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry ivith my friends."* 
And then he invidiously compares' the father's conduct to his brother: 
u This ttvy son" he says not, my brother, — " ivhich hath devoured thy 
living" again invidiously, for in a sense it was his own— u with harlots" 
very probably, yet only a presumption upon his part — 'as soon as he 
was come" he says not, was returned^ as of one who had now at length 
resumed his own place, but speaks of him as a stranger — upon the first 
moment of his arrival, and after years, not of duty, but disobedience — 
"thou hast killed for him" not a kid merely, but the choicest calf in the 
stall. What would he have said, if he had known all, and seen him 
arrayed in the best robe, and with all his other adornments, when this 
which alone he mentions, as it is all which he has learned from his infor- 
mant, so moves his indignation ? 

It is too joyful an occasion for the father to take the just exception 
which he might at the tone and temper of this remonstrance. There 
shall not be, if he can help it, a cloud upon any brow, and instead of 
answering with aught of severity, he expostulates with the malcontent, 
would have him see the unreasonableness of his complaint — nor does he 
fail to warn him that he is now, in fact, falling into the very sin of his 
brother, when he said, " Give me the portion of goods thatfalleth to me" 
He is feeling as though he did not truly possess what he possessed with 
his father, — as though he must separate and divide something off from 
his father's stock, before he could call it truly his own. The father's 
answer is a warning against this evil, which lay at the root of the elder 



he is receiving him now indeed a son, once dead but now alive, once lost to him 
and to God, but now found alike by both. But the servant confines himself to the 
more external features of the case, to the fact, that after all he has gone through of 
excess and hardship, his father has yet received him " safe and sound." Even if 
he could enter deeper into the matter yet with a suitable discretion he confines 
himself to that which falls plainly under his and every one's eye. 

* Jerome (Ad. Dam., Ep. 21) finding an emphasis in these last words, " totih 
my friends" asks of him: Potest esse tibi alicpia jucunditas nisi patre te cum cele- 
brante convivium'? Cf. Bernard, In Cant., Serm. 14, 4. 

t This is one of Bengel's fine and delicate notices : Venit, dicit, ut de alieno 
loquens : non, rediit. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 339 

brother's speech, though it had spoken out more plainly in the younger's, 
the same which spoke out most plainly of all in the words of the wicked 
husbandmen, a This is the heir ; let us kill him, that the inheritance 
may be ours." u Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine;" 
and then he makes him see the unloving spirit out of which his discon- 
tent proceeded; u It was meet that ive should make merry and he glad; 
for this thy brother " (not merely " my son" as thou hast ungraciously 
put it, but " thy brother" kinned to thee, and to whom therefore kind- 
ness is due) — he " was dead, and is alive again ;* teas lost, and isfouiui''' 
What success the father's expostulations met, we are not told. 
Whether we shall assume them to have been successful or not will, in 
fact, be mainly determined by the interpretation which we give to this 
concluding portion of the parable. Those who see in the younger 
brother the Gentile, and therefore in the elder the Jew.f certainly find 
this portion of it encumbered with fewer difficulties than those who deny 
that its primary purpose can be to set forth their history, and their rela- 
tions to one another and to God. As in the interpretation which I have 
here sought to establish, the correctness of such application, as the pri- 
mary at least, has been denied, it will be needful to look elsewhere for a 
solution of the difficulties, which are indeed the same which beset us in 
the parable of the Laborers in the "Vineyard. They resolve them- 
selves into this single one, — Is tlieir righteousness, whom the elder brother 
represents, real or not? If real, how can this be reconciled with his 
contumacy towards his father, and his unloving spirit towards his brother?"! 

* SCHOETTGEN, Hor. Hcb. V. 1, p. 877. 

f Thus Augustine {QilcbsI. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 33) : The elder brother was in the 
field, that is, the Jew was occupied labore servilis operis : returning he heard 
music and dancing, scil. spiritu plenos vocibus consonis Evangelium praBdicare. 
He inquires of the prophets, what mean these festivals in the Church, in which he 
bears no part : they tell of the calling of the Gentiles ; but he is displeased, and 
will not enter. A time however is coming, so Augustine continues, after the ful- 
ness of the Gentiles has come in, when the father will come out and entreat him, to 
the end that all Israel may be saved ; for by this coming out of the father, he un- 
derstands the manifest vocation of the Jews in the last times. Here he must needs 
be in error : for however we may accept the elder brother as a portrait of the Jews 
as they were in the days of Christ's earthly life, yet we cannot imagine his con- 
tumacy and self-righteousness manifesting itself in them, when the Lord hereafter 
shall be successfully dealing with them for their conversion, and when " they shall 
look on him whom they have pierced, and mourn for him as one that is in bitter- 
ness for his first-born." 

X Jerome's reply to Damasus (Ep. 21), which has been more than once referred 
to. is very remarkable, as showing how the difficulties which press upon this part 
of the parable, were felt quite as strongly in the Church in his time as now. It 
was just this question which Damasus had asked : Nunquid persona? justi tarn ina- 
manis- invidia poterit coaptari 1 .And Theophylact calls the question about the 
elder son. rb Tro\v^pv\\T]Toy £rJT7j/xa. 



340 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

For does the true believer accuse God of unrighteousness in hia dealings 
with men 1 does he grudge, and not rather rejoice, when one who has 
departed more widely, it may be, than himself, is brought home to the 
fold of God ? How again does the supposition that his righteousness 
was real, agree with the aim of this part of the parable, which is directed 
against the Pharisees, whose righteousness, for the most part, was not 
such, but feigned and hypocritical 1 But on the other side, if it is not 
real, how is this reconcilable with the course of the story, according to 
which the elder brother had remained ever in his father's house, or witn 
his uncontradicted assertion concerning his own continued obedience, or 
with the meed of approbation and assurances of favor which he receives 
from his father's lips ? Each determination of the question is embar- 
rassed with difficulties — and that certainly with considerable, though 
perhaps not with the greatest, which is come to by Jerome,* by Theo- 
phylact, and by others, namely, that by the elder son the Pharisees are 
signified, whose righteousness was feigned and hypocritical ; — that his 
assertions concerning his own continued obedience are suffered to pass 
uncontradicted, because, even granting them to be true, the case would 
not be altered — the father arguing with him econcesso:\ "Be it so, tha^ 
is not the subject now in hand ; — allowing your obedience to have been 
without interruption, your works always to have been well-pleasing in 
my sight, yet ought you in love to rejoice that your brother has returned 
to us once more, and to be well-pleased at this exuberant joy and glad- 
ness with which he is welcomed home." 

But there seems a possible middle course, which shall escape the 
embarrassments which undoubtedly perplex this as well as the opposite 
scheme of interpretation — that we see in him, or in those whom he repre- 
sents, a low, but not altogether false form of legal righteousness. He is 
one who has been kept b^ the law from gross offences — he has been 
occupied, though in a servilej spirit, in the works of that law. So, no 
doubt, had been many of the Pharisees : many of them hypocrites — but 
also many of them sincerely, though in much blindness of heart, follow- 
ing after righteousness (Rom. x. 1, 2), — a righteousness indeed of a low 
sort,§ in the strivings after which, while those were mostly external, they 

* Christ, lie says, paints the Pharisees, non quales erant, sed quales esse debu- 
arant. Theophylact calls them, Ka& inro&ecriv Slitaioi. 

f Jerome : Non confirmavit vera esse quae dixerat films, sed irascentem alia 
ratione compcscuit. 

^ I cannot, however, press the word SovXevca (ver. 29) into service here, as Ben- 
gel does, whose note upon it is, — Confessio servitutis. There is no confession of a 
servile mind, no abnegation of a state of filial adoption, at Acts xx. 19 ; 1 Thess. i. 9, 
nor in many passages where SouAeuw is used, — any more than when Paul calls him- 
self a servant (SoDAos) of Jesus Christ. 

§ Salmeron : Intelligamns veros justos. sed mediocres. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 341 

did not attain to any deep self-acquaintance, any such knowledge of the 
plague of their own hearts as should render them mild and merciful to 
others, any such insight into the breadth of that law which they pro- 
fessed to keep, as should thoroughly abase them before God. Such may 
have been some of the murmurers here — persons not utterly to be reject- 
ed, nor the good in them to be utterly denied, but who had need rather 
to be shown what was faulty, deficient, narrow, and loveless in their reli- 
gion ; — to be invited to renounce their servile for a filial spirit, and to 
enter into the nobler liberties of that Church and kingdom which Christ 
was establishing upon earth. And in this sense we must then under- 
stand the father's invitation to the elder son to come in. Hitherto he 
had been laboring " in the field"* but now he is invited to a festival. 
They whose work for God had hitherto been servile, the hard taskwork 
of the law, are invited now to enter into 'the joy of the Lord, the freedom 
of the Spirit, f This part of the parable will then be as much a preach- 
ing of the Gospel of the kingdom to the legalist, as the earlier part of it 
had been to the gross sinner, — as love to the one spoke there, so love to 
the other here. 

.The elder son's reply to the father's invitation (ver. 29, 30), and 
especially those words, "yet tlwu never gavest me a kid" show too plainly 
that he understands not the nature of that kingdom to which he is invited. 
He is looking for certain definite rewards for his obedience, to the get- 
ting something/rc^ God, instead of possessing all things in God. J In- 
stead of feeling it his true reward, that he had been ever with his father, 
he rather would plead this as establishing his claim to some other 
reward. § In the father's reply, " Son, thou art ever ivith me, and all 
that I have is thine" we must be careful that we place the emphasis on 
the right word, for without this we shall entirely miss the meaning. It 
is not, " Son thou art ever with me," as though the contrast was drawn 
between him and the younger son who had so long not been with his 
father ; but we should read rather, u Son, thou art ever with one" setting 
the emphasis on the last words. " What need to talk of other friends ? 
thou art ever with a better than them all, with myself. Why shouldest 
thou have expected a kid, when all that I have is thine ?" To make the 
first clause of the sentence an honorable recognition of his past obedi- 
ence, or the second a promise that he " shall inherit all things," is an 

* Ambrose : Terrenis operibus occupatus, ignorans quae sunt Spirittis Dei. But 
Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. cxxxviii.) rather more favorably: Significat sanctos in 
lege facientes opera et prsecepta legis. 

t Augustine : Ad perfruitonem potioris atque jocundioris exultationis invitat. 

X Augustine : Non dicit pater, Omnia possides, sed, Omnia mea tua sunt. 

ty He should have felt, in Bernard's words : Ipse retributor, ipse retributio nostra, 
aec aliud jam quam ipsum expectamus ab ipso. 



342 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

entire missing and marring of the whole. Rather in the first words lies 
the keenest, though at the same time the most loving, rebuke ; " Am not 
I to thee more than all "besides ?" in the second the most earnest warn- 
ing ; " What is mine is thine, if only thou wilt so regard it ; what can I 
do for thee, if thy fellowship in my things fails to make thee feel rich?" 
and how wonderfully do these last words declare to us the true nature of 
the rewards of the kingdom : " All that I have is thine ;" the elder son 
no doubt had thought that what was given to his brother was taken from 
him ; but in the free kingdom of love one has not less, because another 
has more ; but all is possessed by each. The fountain of God's grace is 
not as a little scanty spring in the desert, round which thirsty travellers 
need to strive and struggle, muddying the waters with their feet, pushing 
one another away, lest those waters be drawn dry by others before they 
come to partake of them themselves, but a mighty inexhaustible river, on 
the banks of which all may stand, and of which none need grudge lest if 
others drink largely and freely, there will not enough remain for them- 
selves. To each of his true servants and children the Lord says, as the 
father did to his elder son, " All that I have is thine ;"* if any then is 
straitened and counts that he has not enough, he is straitened, as is the 
elder son here, not in God, but in himself, in his own narrow and grudg- 
ing heart. 

There is abundant reason why nothing should be said of the issue of 
the father's expostulations with his discontented son. That could not 
yet be told, even as it was yet uncertain whether the scribes and Phari- 
sees might not also be won to repentance, which indeed, though of an 
other kind and for other, sins, they needed quite as much as the publi- 
cans and harlots. The Lord not distinctly declaring that the elder son 
sullenly refused to the last to enter in, or that he was finally excluded 
for his contumacy, intimated to these, that as yet the kingdom of God 
was not closed against them — that they too, as well as the publicans 
and sinners were invited and summoned to leave their low, poor, and 
formal service, "the elements of the world" (Gal. iv. 3), and to enter 
into the glorious liberties of the kingdom of Christ — to be present at that 
spiritual festival wherein he should manifest his glory, changing the 
weak and watery elements of that old dispensation into the generous and 
gladdening wine of the new. (John ii. 1-11.) 

That, it is true, of which we have here only an uncertain intimation, 
the refusing, and on these grounds, to go in, was fearfully fulfilled and 
on the largest scale, when the Jews in the apostolic times refused to take 

* Augustine, on these words, says : Sic enim perfectis et purgatis ac jam 
Immortalibus filiis habentur omnia, ut sint omnium singula, et omnia singulorum : 
It enim cupiditas nihil sine angustia, ita nihil cum angustia caritas tenet. 



THE PRODIGAL SON. . 343 

part in the great festival of reconciliation, with which the Gentile world's 
incoming into the kingdom was being celebrated. How may we read 
all through the Acts, as especially xiii. 45; xiv. 19; xvii. 5, 13; xviii. 
12 ; a commentary on this statement, — He would not go in, because his 
brother was received so freely with music and with dancing. If he had 
been submitted first to a painful apprenticeship of the law, if he too had 
been sent to work in the field, it might have been another thing. (Acts 
xv. 1.) But that he should be thus made free of the kingdom of God. 
be brought into the festival at once — this was more than they could bear. 
Numbers staid openly and sullenly without. Others, as the Ebionites, 
only pretended to go in, or went in under a mistaken supposition that 
it should be as in their narrow hearts they desired, and discovering 
their error, presently withdrew themselves again.* At the same time 
we Gentiles must not forget that the whole matter will be reversed at 
the end of the present dispensation, and that we shall be in danger then 
of playing the part of the elder brother, and shall do so, if we grudge at 
the largeness of the grace bestowed upon the Jew, who is now the 
prodigal feeding upon husks far away from his Father's house, f 

* Augustine (Serm. Inedd.) : Irascitur frater major . . . Stomachati sunt Judaei 
venire gentes de tanto compendio, nullis impositis oneribus legis, non dolore cir- 
cumcisionis carnalis, in peccato accipere baptismum salutarem. 

| Cajetan's view of the elder brother and his anger is very interesting, and I am 
not aware that any interpreter, except indeed Jerome, and he but slightly, has 
brought it forward. He speaks first of the joy and consolation which the penitent 
sinner often finds at his first return unto God ; — these are set forth by the music 
and dancing, — for him all the glories of the Gospel have the freshness of novelty, 
and, for a while, an overpowering gladness, which they cannot have for him who 
has ever continued in the ways of the Lord. The joy of the latter has indeed been 
infinitely greater than this one burst of gladness, but it has been spread over a far 
larger space of time :— so that seeing the other's exultation, he may be tempted 
for a moment to ask, with a transient feeling of discontent, why to him also is not 
given this burst of exulting joy % why for him the fatted calf has never been slain 1 
— But the answer is, because he has been ever with his father, because his father's 
possessions are, and have been always, his. His joy therefore is soberer and more 
solid, — not the suddenly swelling mountain cataract, but the deep, though smooth 
and silent, river : and what is given to the other, is given to him just because he is 
a beginner. And Cajetan concludes his very interesting explanation of the whole 
parable with these words : Adverte hie, prudens lector, Deum quandoque noviter 
pcenitentes afficere magna consolatione interni gaudii, donee firmentur in via Dei ; . . 
haec autem non sunt majoris perfectionis fructus, sed deliciae quaedam seu blanditise 
ccelestis Patris, quae perfectioribus multis negantur. This view was a very favorite 
one with the Mystics, who observed how in the festivals the first and eighth days, 
that is, their beginnings and their glorious consummations, were commonly the 
days of chieftest gladness, and they compare these joys to sugared dainties, with 
which those who are as it were children in spiritual things, are first allured into 
Christ's school. . Volmar {De Spirit. Perfect.) uses a like image : Haec itaque devo- 



344 THE PRODIGAL SON. 

tionis gratia infantibus dari solet, ut ad bona opera per earn incitentur, quemadmo- 
dum venaticis canibus in principio solet gustus ferarum captarum praBberi, ut ad ve- 
nandum eo fortius insistant. — Before leaving this parable, I would just take notice 
of a very interesting allegory, called indeed itself, but incorrectly, a parable, found- 
ed upon this present one, which appears among the works of St. Bernard, but is by 
his Benedictine editors (v. 1, p. 1251) attributed to some other author. 



XXV. 

THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

Luke xvi. 1-9. 

This parable, whereof no one, who has seriously considered it, can un- 
derrate the difficulties, — difficulties which multiply rather than disap- 
pear the closer the parable is searched into, — which Cajetan found so 
great that he gave up the matter in despair, affirming a solution impos- 
sible, — has been the subject of manifold, and those the most opposite, 
interpretations. I cannot doubt, however, that many interpreters have, 
so to speak, " overrun their game," and that we have here a parable of 
Christian prudence, Christ exhorting us, if I may so say, to use the world 
and the world's goods in a manner against itself, and for God. I shall 
not attempt to give a complete account of all the interpretations to which 
it has been submitted ; since that would be an endless task,* but as I 
go through the parable shall note what parts of it those interpreters, 
who have the best right to be heard, have considered its key-words, and 
the meanings which they have made the whole parable to render up, 
noting at the same time what seem the weak and unsatisfactory points 
in those explanations which I shall reject. 

The Lord, having finished the parable of the Prodigal Son, did not 
break off the conversation, but, — it is probable, after a short pause, which 
he allowed that his words might sink down into the hearts of his hearers, 
— resumed, addressing his words, however, not any more to the gain- 
sayers and opposers, — not to the Pharisees, but to those who heard him 
gladly and willingly, — to u his disciples" as we are (ver. 1) expressly 
told. By " his disciples" we must understand not exclusively the twelve 
(see Luke vi. 13) nor yet on the other hand the multitude, in a certain 

* Schreitcr, in a work entirely devoted to this parable (Explic. Parable de 
wprobo (Econ. Descriptio ; Lips. 1803), gives an appalling list of explanations 
©ffered, and a brief analysis and judgment of them all; but I have not been able 
'jO derive much assistance from the book. 



346 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

degree well affected to tlie doctrine and person of Christ, yet at the 
same time hanging loosely upon him, — following him from place to place, 
but with minds not as yet made up to join themselves without reserve 
to him as to their master and lord : — rather the whole body of those who 
had attached themselves to be taught of him, whom his word had found 
out in the deep of their spirits, and who having left the world's service, 
had decidedly passed over into the ranks of his people. -To them, to the 
"disciples" so understood, the parable was addressed, and for them 
meant, since it is scarcely probable, as some would have it, that the 
Lord was speaking to them, but at the Pharisees. These last, it is true, 
were also hearers of the Lord's words (ver. 14), but the very mention 
of them as such excludes them from being the persons to whom it was 
primarily addressed. The Lord may have intended, — it would seem 
most likely did intend, — some of his shafts to glance off upon them, while 
yet it was not at them that they were originally aimed. We shall pre- 
sently see that in relation to, at least, one of the expositions which are 
offered, it will be important to have fixed in our minds for whom above 
all the parable was meant. 

" There was a certain rich man, which had a steward" not a land- 
bailiff* merely, but a ruler over all his goods, such as was Eliezer in 
the house of Abraham (Gen. xxiv. 2-12), and Joseph in the house of 
Potiphar (Gren. xxxix. 4). It was one of the main duties of such a 
steward to dispense their portions of food to the different members of the 
household (Luke xii. 42), to give the servants or slaves their portion in 
due season, a duty which we sometimes find undertaken by the diligent 
mistress of a house (Prov. xxxi. 15). " And the same was accused 
unto him that he had wasted his goods ."f This of the lord's needing that 

* And therefore not villicus, which the Vulgate has, nor yet dispensator, which 
is a cashier-. The inaccuracy of the first expression is noted and corrected by 
Jerome (Ep. 121, qu. 6), who at the same time gives a good account of what were 
the steward's duties : Villicus proprie villae gubernator est, unde nomen accepit. 
OIkov6/j.os autem tarn pecuniae quam frugum, et omnium quae dominus possidet, 
dispensator. See too Ad Eustoch, Ep. 22, c. 35, for the duties of the ceconomus, 
in the Egyptian monasteries ; and for much information on the subjeet, Mr. Gres- 
well's Exp. of the Par., v. 4, p. 3, and Becker's Charikles, v. 2, p. 37. Procurator 
would be the best translation. (See Becker's Gallus, v. 1, p. 109.) In the pictures 
lately discovered in the Egyptian tombs, the steward is seen often with all his 
writing materials, taking an exact note of the amount of the harvest, before it is 
stored in the granaries (Hengstenberg's Bucher Moses, und JEgyplcn, p. 23) ; which 
is something to the point here, as the same person would naturally have the over- 
Bight of the outgoings as well. 

j- There does not seem any reason why we should have shared the error of the 
Vulgate, quasi dissipasset, when it is plain from the present (ws ZiaaKopirifav) of the 
original, that it is no past, but an actual and present, unfaithfulness to his trust 
with which he is charged. 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 347 

the ill conduct of his steward should come to his ears through a third 
party, belongs to the earthly setting forth of the truth : yet it finds its 
parallel, Gen. xviii. 30, 31. There is not the slightest ground for sup- 
posing, as some' have done, that the steward was falsely and calum- 
niously accused. It lies not in the word, for the same is used Dan. iii. 8, 
where it is said that certain Chaldaeans came near and accused the Jews ; 
yet it was not falsely that they accused them of having refused to wor- 
ship the golden image ; nor had Daniel been calumniously accused of 
having knelt and prayed, and given thanks before his God ; — malignantly 
it might be, and in each case was, and so much lies in the word, but not 
falsely.* No support then is to be found in this word for their view, 
who would in a greater or less measure clear the character of the stew- 
ard.! Indeed, his own words (ver. 3) seem an implicit acknowledg- 
ment of his guilt : he proposes not to make any defence, and his after 
conduct, his scheme for helping himself out of his difficulties, will allow 
no conclusion, but that the accusation, though it might have been 
brought against him by some enemy and from malicious motives, yet 
was one with most entire foundation in the truth. The accusation was, 



* In both places the same word (5mj8aAA«) is used in the Septuagint, by which 
Luke here expresses the accusation against the steward. Cf. 2 Mace. iii. 11. 
He was as the Vulgate has it, diffamatus, but not in our English use of the word, 



t As for instance Schleiermacher, who says : " The right view of this parable is 
to be sure very much perverted, if the steward who, after all, has not committed 
any breach of trust (1) on his own account, nor was charged with it, is notwith- 
standing to be termed oikop. t. adinlas, and we will not make up our minds to leave 
oltcovSfMos without an epithet, and to refer this aSinlus to errriveo-ev : [against this 
construction see Winer's Grammatik, p. 185 :] and if the master who treats his 
servant in so very arbitrary a way, and discharges him, without inquiry, upon a 
secret information, and who besides discovers no higher measure by which he 
judges of human actions than prudence, if this character is all along considered a 
blameless man." But it is very difficult to see what Schleiermacher would gain 
for his scheme by the altered construction. " The Lord praised the steward for 
his injustice," comes pretty nearly to the same thing as, " The Lord praised the un- 
just steward ;" and with such analogous phrases as nafiuva ttjs atititias, Kptr^s ttjj 
cLdi/cias (Luke xviii. 6), aKpoarfs eVi^ 07x01/7} s (Jam. i. 25), he will scarcely persuade 
that the ordinary and natural collocation of the words is to be abandoned, even to 
help out his marvellous interpretation of the parable, according to which the rich 
householder is the Romans, the steward the publicans, and the debtors the Jewish 
people ; the lesson it contains being, If ther publicans show themselves mild and 
indulgent towards their nation, the Romans will in their hearts praise them, and 
they who have now lost all favor with their countrymen, will by them be favorably 
received. But in what sense, it may be asked, could a coming into favor Avith the 
Jewish people be termed a reception into everlasting habitations % this last is 
somewhat too strong a phrase for any thing which they could do for those who 
showed themselves favorably disposed towards them 



348 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

that he wasted or scattered his master's goods, — that he administered 
them without due fidelity, turning them to private ends, laying them out 
for himself, and not for his lord. This last, when the charges against 
his steward were brought to his ears, u called him and said unto him, 
Hoiv is it tliat I hear this of thee ?" This is not examination, but rather 
the expostulation of indignant surprise, — " of thee* whom I had trusted 
so far, — to whom I had committed so much ; Give an account of thy 
stewardship^ for thou mayest be no longer steward" 

They who, like Anselm, see in the parable the rise and growth and 
fruits of repentance, lay much stress upon these words, " How is it tli/xt 
I hear this of tJiee?" This remonstrance is for them the voice of God 
speaking to the sinner, and convincing him of sin, bringing home to his 
conscience that he has had a stewardship and has been abusing it ; and 
the threat, thou mayest be no longer steivard" is in like manner a bring- 
ing home to him, by sickness or by some other means, that he will soon 
be removed from his earthly stewardship, and have to render an account. 
He feels that he cannot answer God one thing in a thousand, and that 
when once he is thus removed, there will be no help for him : he cannot 
dig, for the night will have come in which no man can work ; and he 
will be ashamed to beg for that mercy, which he knows will then be 
refused. Consistently with this view, they see in the lowering of the 
bills, not a further and crowning act of unrighteousness on his part, but 
the first act of his righteousness, the dealing of one who now seeks, 
while he has time, to do good with that which is committed to him, to 
lay out the things in his power not with merely selfish aims, but in acts 
of charity and kindness, to scatter for God rather than for himself, to 
heap up in heaven and not on earth. The dishonesty of the act they 
get over, either by giving this lowering of the bills altogether a mystical 
meaning, and so refusing to contemplate it in the letter at all, or in a 
way of which we shall presently have to take notice. He is still called 
they say, the a unjust" steward (ver. 8), not because he remains such, 
but because of his former unrighteousness ; he bears that name for the 
encouragement of penitents. It is as much as to say, Though he had 
been this unrighteous ungodly man beforetime, he yet obtained now 
praise and commendation from his lord. He retained the title, as did 
Matthew that of " the publican" (Matt. x. 3), even after he had become 
an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ,! in perpetual remembrance of the 



* "Wetstein : Mirantis ; de te ! quem procuratorem constitui. 

+ So the author of a sermon in the Bened. edit, of St. Bernard (v. 2, p. 714), 
who gives this as the sum of the parable : Multa laude est dignus, qui relicto errore' 
pristinas conversations, diviti Deo satisfaciens redit ad gratiam : and Anselm 
{Horn. 12), who, however, sees in the steward only an unfaithful ruler in the 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 349 

grace of God which had found him in that mean employment, and out of 
that had raised him to so great a dignity ; as in like manner we have 
Zenas the lawyer (Tit. iii. 13) ; Rahab the harlot (Heb. xi. 31) ; Simon 
ilbc leper (Matt. xxvi. 6) ; not that such they were now, but that such 
they once had been. But there is nothing in the man's counsels with 
himself that marks the least change of mind, the slightest repentance — 
no recognition of guilt, no acknowledgment of a trust abused, no desire 
expressed henceforward to be found faithful, but only an utterance of 
selfish anxiety concerning his future lot, of fear lest poverty and distress 
may come upon him ; and the explanation, however ingenious, of his 
being still characterized (ver. 8) as the ' : unjust" steward, is quite un- 
satisfactory. 

But now follow his counsels with himself, and first his expression ol 
utter inability any where to find help : his past softness of life has unfit- 
ted him for labor : his pride forbids his begging. Yet this helplessness 
endures not long. He knows what he will do ; and has rapidly con- 
ceived a plan whereby to make provision against that time of need and 
destitution which is now so near at hand. If his determination is not 
honest, it is at any rate promptly taken ; and this is part, no doubt, of 
the skill for which he gets credit, — ; that he was not brought to a non- 
plus, but quickly found a way of escape from his distresses. u I am re- 
solved ichat to do, that when I am put out of tlie stewardship* they may 
receive me into their houses" as one from whom they have received kind- 
nesses, and who, therefore, may trust to find hospitable entertainment 
among them, — a miserable prospect, as the son of Sirach declares (xxix. 
22-28), yet better than utter destitution and want. Hereupon follows 
the collusion between him and his lord's debtors. They owed, it seems, 
to the householder, at least the two whose cases are instanced, and who 
are evidently brought forward as representatives of many more, — just 
as but three servants are named out of the ten (Luke xix. 13), to whom 
pounds had been intrusted, — the one a hundred measures of oil, and 
the other a hundred measures of wheat. It is not likely that they 
were tenants of his, who paid their rents in kind, which rents were now 
by the steward lowered, and the leases tampered with ; the name u debt- 
or" seems not to point that way. Again, the enormous amountf of the 

Church, not every man to whom a dispensation has been committed, which he has 
been abusing ; — he says : Laudari a Domino meruit; ct nos ergo laudemus eura, . . . 
nee eum in aliquo, priusquam correctus est, audeamus reprehendere, ut ha?c puto- 
mus in his qua? erga debitores egit domino fraudem fecisse, sed potius credamus 
eum in his lucra Domini sui prudenti consilio quoesisse, et ejus voluntatem 
impl6sse. 

* In the Yulgate : Amotus a villicatione ; but Tertullian in far happier Latin : 
ab actu summotus. 

t The word "measure" in our translation, which may be a small or a largo 



350 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

oil and wheat, both of them costly articles (see Prov. xxi. I""), which 
is due, makes it equally unlikely that these "debtors" were poorer 
neighbors or dependents, whom the rich householder had supplied 
with means of living in the shape of food, — not however as a. gift, but 
as a loan, taking from them an acknowledgment, and meaning to be re- 
paid, when they had ability. Rather we might assume the foregoing 
transactions, by which these men came into the relation of debtors to 
the rich man, to have been of this kind, — that he, having large posses- 
sions, and therefore large incomings from the fruits of the earth, had 
sold, through his steward, a portion of such upon credit to these debt- 
ors, — merchants, or other factors, and they had not as yet made their 
payments. x They had given, however, their bills, or notes of hand, ac- 
knowledging the amount which they had received, in which amount they 
owned themselves to stand indebted to him. These, which had remained 
in the steward's keeping, he now returns to. them, — " Take thy bill" or 
''■Take back thy bill"* — bidding them to alter them, or substitute oth- 
ers in their room, in which they confess themselves to have received 
much smaller-amounts of oil and wheat than was actually the case, and 
consequently to be so much less in the rich man's debt than they truly 
were. To one debtor he remits half, to another the fifth of his debt ; by 
these different proportions teaching us, say many, that charity is not to 
be a blind profuseness, exhibited without respect of the needs, greater 
or smaller,- of those who are its objects, but ever to be exercised with 
sonsideration and discretion! — that the hand is to be opened to some 
more widely than to others. 

In this lowering of the bills, YitringaJ finds the key of the parable, 
and proposes the following interpretation, which deserves to be recorded, 
if for nothing else, yet for its exceeding ingenuity. The rich man is 
God, the steward the Pharisees, or rather all the ecclesiastical leaders of 
the people, to whom was committed the administration of the kingdom 
of God, who were stewards of its mysteries. But they were accused by 

quantity, fails to intimate this. Better Tyndal and Cranmer, who give it, " tuns of 
oil " (the Rhemish, pipes), and " quarters of wheat." It is exactly this quantity, 
one hundred cors of wheat, which in one of the apocryphal gospels, where every 
thing is on a gigantic scale, as with those whose only notion of greatness is size, 
we are told that the child Jesus received in return for a single grain of wheat 
which he had planted in the ground. (Thilo's Cod. Apocryph., p. 302.) 

* TpdiJi.iJLa = xeip6ypa<poi> (Col. ii. 14) = ypafip.aTe7ov XP eous 6fxo\oyT]TiK6v, by the 
Vulgate happily translated, cautio. See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. 
Interest of money, p. 524. 

t Thus Gregory the Great, who quotes from Gen. iv. : Si recte offeras, et non 
recte dividas, pecc&sti. 

X Erklar. d. Parab., p. 921, seq. This seems to have been the standing inter- 
pretation of the Cocceian school, for see Deyling's Obss. Sac, v. 5, p. 335. 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 351 

the prophets (see for instance Ezek. xxxiv. 2 ; Mai. ii. 8), and lastly by 
Christ himself, that they neglected their stewardship, used the power 
committed to them, not for the glory of God, but for purposes of self- 
honor — that they scattered his goods. They feel the justice of this ac- 
cusation, and that they are not in the grace of their Lord, and only out- 
wardly belong to his kingdom. Therefore they now seek to make them- 
selves friends of others, of the debtors of their Lord, of sinful men, — and 
this they do, acting as though they still possessed authority in the things 
of his kingdom. And the way by which they seek to make these friends 
is, by lowering the standard of righteousness and obedience, inventing 
convenient glosses for the evading of the strictness of God's law, allowing 
men to say, " It is a gift" (Matt. xv. 5), suffering them to put away their 
wives on any slight excuse (Luke xvi. 18), and by various devices mak- 
ing slack the law of God (Matt, xxiii. 16) ; — thus obtaining for themselves 
favor and an interest with men, and so enabling themselves, although 
God's grace was withdrawn from them, still to keep their hold on men, 
and to retain their advantages, their honors, and their peculiar privileges. 
This interpretation has one attraction, that it gives a distinct meaning 
to the lowering of the bills, — " Write ffty" " Write fourscore ;" — which 
very few others do. The moral will then be no other than is commonly 
and rightly drawn from the parable ; Be prudent as they, as these chil- 
dren of the present world, but provide for yourselves not temporary 
friends, but everlasting habitations : they use heavenly things- for earthly 
objects ; but do you reverse the case, and show how earthly things may 
be used for heavenly.* 

* "With the interpretation of these words as being a lowering the standard of 
obedience very nearly agrees the use of the parable which is made in the Liber 
S. Joannis Apocryphus, a religious book of the Albigenses, republished in Thilo's 
Codex Apocrypkus, p. 884, seq. It is with the very question which the steward 
here puts to the debtors, "How much owest thou unto my lord?" and with the 
bidding " Write fifty," "Write fourscore," that Satan is introduced as tempting and 
seducing the inferior angels (blandiendo angelos invisibilis Patris). The very in- 
genious exposition of the parable by Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, a cotemporary 
of St. Ambrose, is in the same line. He says, Villicus iniquitatis Diabolus in- 
telligendus est, qui in seculo relictus est, ut immunitatem [immanitatem 7] ejus 
villici fngientes ad pietatem Dei suppliciter curramus. Hie dissipat facultates Do- 
mini, quando in nos grassatur, qui portio Domini sunms. Hie excogitat quomodo 
valoat debitores Domini, h. e.. peccatis involutos non solum aperto praslio persequi, 
sed sub obtentu fallacis benevolentiaj, blanda fraude decipere, quo magis eum in 
domos suas falsa benignitate seducti recipiant, cum ipso in asternum judicandi . . . 
Hie debita conservorum suorum relaxare se falso promittit. dum vel in fide vel in 
opere peccantibus varum pollicctur indulgentiam. . . . Laudat [Salvator] astu- 
tiam villici minaciter simul et providenter. Minaciter quidem, cum vocabulo 
iniquitatis pessimam Diaboli prudentiam condemnat: providenter autem, dum 
contra argumentorum ejus consilia discipulos audientes confirmat, ut omni cautela 
atque prudentia tarn callido atque prudenti inimico repugnent. 



352 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

Connected with this view is that of the writer of an elaborate article 
in a modern German Review.* He conceives the parable was meant 
for the scribes and Pharisees — only that he makes it to contain counsel 
for them, — the unjust steward is set forth for them to copy ; while Vi- 
tringa made it to contain a condemnation of them. They were the 
stewards and administrators in a dispensation which was now coming to 
a close ; and when in its room the kingdom of Christ was set up, then 
their much abused stewardship would be taken away from them. The 
writer finds in the parable an exhortation to them, that in the little while 
that should intervene between the announcement and actual execution 
of this purpose of God's, they should cultivate that spirit which alone 
would give them an entrance u i?ito everlasting habitations" into the 
kingdom not to be moved, — the spirit, that is, which they so much lacked, 
of mildness and love and meekness toward all men, their fellow sinners. 
This spirit and the works which it would prompt, he affirms, are justly 
set forth under the image of the remission of debts f — and those, debts 
due to another, since it is against God that primarily every sin is com- 
mitted. Such a spirit as this, of love and gentleness toward all men, 
flows out of the recognition of our own guilt, which recognition the writer 
finds in the absence on the steward's part of all attempts to justify or 
excuse himself. The same temper which would prompt them to these 
works of love and grace, would fit them also for an entrance into the 
everlasting habitations, the coming kingdom, which, unlike that dispen- 
sation now ready to vanish away, should endure for ever. But how 
shall this interpretation be reconciled with the words, "He said also 
unto his disciples" with which the Evangelist introduced the parable ?J 

* Zyro, in the Theol. Stud. u. Kritt. for 1831, p. 776. He had been however, 
though he seems not to know it, long ago anticipated by Salmeron (Serm. in 
Evang. Par., p. 231) : Quia enim Scribae et Pharisasi cum lege et sacerdotio in 
promptu erant, ut deficerent . . hortatur Dominus ut dent operam, ne austere cum 
peccatoribus procedant, . . ut ita sibi praeparent amicos, qui eos in Evangelium 
recipiant. 

f "Weisse {Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 162, seq.) brings forward as though it were a 
great discovery of his own, and all that was wanted for the easy explanation of the 
parable, this view, that the lowering of the bills is the image here under which, 
not acts of bounty and love with the temporal mammon, but the spiritual act of 
the forgiveness of sins, is represented. He owns, however, that he cannot bring 
this into agreement with ver. 9, " Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of un- 
righteousness," and the words in Italics he therefore includes in brackets, being 
t: convinced that Jesus never spoke them !" 

^ Not very unlike this, is the explanation given by Tertullian {JDe Fugd in 
Perscc, c. 13), only that he makes the exhortation to be addressed to the entire 
Jewish people, and not to the spiritual chiefs of the nation alone : Facite autem 
vobis amicos de mammona. ; quomodo intelligendum sit parabola praemissa doceat, 
ad populura Judaicum dicta, qui commissam sibi rationem Domini cum mal6 



THE DNJUST STEWARD. 353 

it will then plainly be addressed not to them, but to the scribes and 
Pharisees. 

But to return ; — with these new acts of unrighteousness this child of 
the present world filled up the short interval between his threatened and 
his actual destitution of his office. It is not said that he attempted to 
conceal the fraudulent arrangement which he was making, or that he 
called his lord's debtors together secretly — whether it was that he trusted 
that they would keep counsel, being held together by a common interest 
and by the bands of a common iniquity, — or whether he thus falsified 
the accounts, fearing neither God nor man, careless whether the trans- 
action were blown abroad or not, as being now a desperate man, who had 
no character to lose, and who was determined to brave the matter, confi- i 
dent that there would be no redress for his lord, when the written docu- 
ments testified against him. This latter seems to me the most probable 
supposition — that the thing was done openly and in the face of day,* and 
that the arrangement was such as, from some cause or other, being once 
completed, could not be broken, but must be permitted to stand. Were 
it meant to have been a secret transaction, the lord's discovery of the 
fraud would hardly have been passed over, and the steward would 
scarcely have obtained for a contrivance which proved so clumsy that it 
was presently seen through and detected, even the limited praise which 
he does obtain as a skilful adapter of his means to his ends. Least of 
aL would he have obtained such praise, if it had depended merely on the- 
forbearance of his master, in the case of discovery being made, which 
the event proved must have been regarded as probable from the begin- 
ning, whether the arrangement should be allowed to stand good or not. 
Such forbearance could not have been counted on, even though the 
wordsf of the lord should lead us, in the present instance, to assume that 

•dministrasset, deberet de mammonae honiinibus, quod nos eramus, amicos sibi 
potius prospicere quam inimicos, et relevare nos a debitis peccatorum, quibus Deo 
detinebamur, si nobis de dominica ratione conferrent, ut cum coepisset ab hujus 
deficere gratia, ad nostram fidem refugientes reciperentur in tabernacula seterna. 

* His words to the debtors, " Sit down quickly and write." may appear to some 
characteristic of a man who wished to huddle over the matter as fast as possible, 
for fear of discovery; — so Bengel explains them, — Tax^us, raptim, furtim; and 
Maldonatus : Quod dicit citd, hominis mihi fraudulent et male agentis esse videtur, 
timentis, ne in scelere deprehendatur, ne quis dum adulterantur litterae, supervcniat. 
But there is another fair explanation, that they are the words of a man who feels 
that what is to be done, must be done at once — that to-day he has means to help 
himself, while to-morrow they will have passed from his hands. The transaction 
was evidently not with the debtors, one by one, apart from and unknown to each 
other, as is slightly but sufficiently indicated, by the ab 5e ("And thou"), with 
which the steward begins his address to the second. 

■j- Jensen, however, who has a very interesting essay on this parable (Theol 
23 



354 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

he did not allow the steward to reap the full benefits which he honed 
from his dishonest scheming. 

But whether the arrangement was a clandestine one or not, that it was 
a fraudulent one seems beyond a doubt : such, on the face of it, it is. and 
any attempt to mitigate, or explain away the dishonesty of the act, is 
hopeless.* It may be said, indeed, and has sometimes been so, that this 
dishonesty of the transaction is not of the essence of the parable, but an 
inconvenience arising from the inadequacy of earthly relationships to set 
forth divine. They must fail somewhere, and this is the weak side of 
the earthly relation between a steward and his lord, which renders it not 
altogether a perfect type of the relation existing between men and God, 
— that in the latter case, to use Hammond's words, u the man hath lib- 
erty to use the wealth put into his hands, so as may be most (not only 
for his master's but also) for his own advantage, namely, to his endless 
reward in heaven, which, though it were an injustice and falseness in a 
servant here on earth, who is altogether to consider his master's profit", 
not his own, yet it is duty, and that which by the will and command of 
God we are obliged to do, in the execution of that steward's office which 
the rich man holds under God — and is the only thing commended to us 
in this parable ; which is so far from denominating him that makes this 
advantage of the treasure committed to him an unjust or unrighteous 
steward, in the application, that it denominates him faithful (mo-ros) in 
the latter part of the parable, and him only false (adiKos) that doth it 

Stud. u. Krit., 1829, p. 699), sees a spiritual significance in the householder's 
forbearing to break the arrangement— he says: "That which is related of the 
master, — how he regards the dealing of the steward, — does not blame it, nor stand 
to his rights,— seems to me to be the setting forth the grace of God, through which, 
instead of entering into judgment with sinful men, he rather rewards the good in 
them, which, according to strict right, could not even attain to secure them from 
punishment. For he leaves the steward to enjoy the fruit of his device — and since, 
after what has been said above, it cannot be conveniently supposed that he had no 
right to demand a strict reckoning in the matter, it only remains to consider this 
conduct as a voluntary forbearance on his part." 

* One might say absurd, but that it has been done with so much ability by 
Schulz in an instructive little treatise ( Ub. d. Parabel von Vcrwatter, Breslau, 1821), 
as to redeem it from such a charge. The ancient oIkovS/uos, he says, was one with 
far greater liberty of action, more uncontrolled freedom in the administration of 
the things committed to him, than, any to whom we should in modern times apply 
the title of steward — and the sum of his statement seems this (though the compari- 
son is not his), that his conduct at this latest moment of his stewardship, however 
merely selfish it might be, yet was no more dishonest, than it would be dishonest 
on the part of the minister of a kingdom, who had hitherto been oppressing the 
people under him, and administering the affairs of the kingdom for his own 
interests and pleasures, yet now, when about to be removed from his place of 
authority, to seek to Avin the people's love and a place in their hearts, by remitting 
or lowering the heavy dues and taxes with which before he had burdened them. 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 355 

not. In worldly things there is not, and there never can be, such abso 
lute identity of interests between a master and a servant, that a servant 
dealing wholly with reference to his own interests, would at the same 
time forward in the best manner his lord's. But our interests as servants 
of a heavenly Lord, that is, our true interests, absolutely coincide in all 
things with his ; so that when we administer the things committed to U3 
for him, then we lay them out also for ourselves, and when for ourselves, 
for our lasting and eternal gain, then also for him. 

"And tlie lord commended the unjust steward , because he had, done 
wisely" Every one who is able to judge of the construction of the ori- 
ginal, will at once acknowledge that it is the lord oftlie steward, he who 
has twice before in the parable been called by this name (ver. 3, 5), that 
is here meant, and not our Lord, who does not begin to speak directly in 
his own person till ver. 9 — the intermediate verse being the point of 
transition from the narration to the direct exhortation.* The attempt to 
substitute " cunningly" for the "wisely" of our translation, and so, by 
limiting and lowering the commendation given, to evade the moral diffi- 
culty of the passage, cannot altogether be borne out by an appeal to the 
original. " Wisely" may not be the happiest word that could have been 
selected, and certainly is not, since wisdom is never in Scripture discon- 
nected from moral goodness. f But if more commendation is implied in 
" ivisely" than the original warrants, in " cunningly" there would be less ; 
" prudently" is clearly the word that should have been chosen, and so 
in Wiclif 's translation it was, though the word has disappeared from all 
our subsequent versions. But concerning the praise itself, which can- 
not be explained away as though it were admiration of the man's cun- 
ning, it is true that none but a mere malignant, such as the apostate 
Julian would make here a charge against the morality of the Scripture, 
or pretend, as he does, to believe that Jesus meant to commend an un- 
righteous action, and propose it, in its unrighteousness, as a model for 
imitation. 

* So Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. liii. 2) : Cor ejus laudavit dominus ejus. Com- 
pare Luke xii. 42 ; xiv. 23, where in like manner 5 Kvpios, without further qualifica- 
tion, is used of an earthly lord. 

f In PlatO ; S words, Uaffa iiri(Tr-f]iJ.^ x^P 1 ^ ! 1 ^ o*iKaio<Tvvt}S ko\ rrjs aWTJs apeT?]S, 
vavovpyia ob (ro(pia (palverai. Rather (ppovtfxws is a middle term, not "bringing out 
prominently the moral characteristics, either good or evil, of the action to which it 
is applied, but recognizing in it a skilful adaptation of the means to the end — 
affirming nothing in the way of moral approbation or disapprobation either of 
means or end, but leaving their worth to be determined by other considerations. 
If the <pp6vip.os were the cunning, we should find it opposed to the ti.Ka.Kos, the 
simple, but we do find it actually opposed to the fj-wpSs. (Matt. vii. 24. 26 : xxv. 2.) 
The <pp6vT\<Tis stands in the same relation to the o-vve<rts (understanding) as th« 
Twpla does to the vovs (reason). 



356 ' THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

Yet at the same time few will deny that the praise has something 
perplexing in it — though rather from the liability of the passage to abuse, 
unguarded as at first sight it appears, though it is not really so (for see 
ver. 11, which should never be disconnected from the parable), than from 
its not being capable of a fair explanation. The explanation is clearly 
this : the man's deed has two sides on which it may be contemplated, 
— one, the side of its dishonesty, upon which ii is most blameworthy, — 
the other, the side of its prudence, its foresight, upon which, if it be not 
particularly praiseworthy, yet it supplies a sufficient analogon to a Chris- 
tian virtue, — one which should be abundantly, but is only too weakly 
found in most followers of Christ, — to make it the ground of an exhorta- 
tion and rebuke to these, — just as any of the deeds of bold bad men have 
a side, that is the side of their boldness and decision, upon which they 
rebuke the doings of the weak and vacillating good. There are martyrs 
of the Devil who put to shame the saints of Grod, and running as they do 
with more alacrity to death than these to life,* may be proposed to them 
for their imitation. "We may disentangle a bad man's energy from his 
ambition, so far at least as to contemplate them apart from one another, 
and may then praise the one and condemn the other. Even so our Lord 
in the present case disentangles the steward's dishonesty from his pru- 
dence : the one of course can only have his earnest rebuke, — the other 
may be usefully extolled for the purpose of provoking his people by em- 
ulation to a like prudence, which yet should be at once a holy prudence, 
and a prudence employed about things of far higher and more lasting 
importance.! 

The next verse fully bears out and confirms this view of the Lord's 
meaning ; " For the children of this world are in their generation wiser 
than the children of light." Of course there is the same objection to the 
"wiser" here that there was to the "wisely" of the verse preceding. 
As we saw that ought to have been " prudently," so this ought to have 
been " more prudent."f " The children of this world" are evidently 

* Bernard : Martyres Diaboli . . . alacrius currant ad mortem quani nos ad 
vitam. There is a striking story of one of the Egyptian eremites which illustrates 
the matter in hand. Chancing to see a dancing girl, he was moved to tears. 
Being asked the reason, he replied, That she should be at such pains to please men 
in her sinful vocation : and we in our holy calling use so little diligence to please 
God. Compare an incident in the Life of Pelagia in Lipomanni Acta Sanctorum, 
v. 5, p. 226. 

-(• Clarius : Laudat ingenium, damnat factum. Augustine's explanation (Quast. 
Evang., 1. 2, c. 34) is less satisfactory: E contrario dicuntur istse similitudines, ut 
intelligamus si laudari potuit ille a domino qui fraudem faciebat, quanto amplius 
placent Domino Deo, qui secundum ejus prseceptum ilia opera faciunt. Cf. Jeromb 
AdAlgas,, Ep. 121, qu. 6. 

:£ It would seem that exactly thus one of the old Latin versions had astutiores. 
'Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. liii. 2.) 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 357 

the earthly-minded, the men of the earth, those whose portion is here ; 
and who look not beyond — who have adopted the world's maxims, being 
born of the spirit of the world, and not of God. The phrase occurs but 
once else in Scripture, and then in our Evangelist (xx. 34), though the 
term " children of light" is common also to St. John (xii. 36), and St. 
Paul (1 Thess. v. 5 ; Ephes. v. 8). There is good reason why the faith- 
ful should be here calledby that rather than by any other name, for so 
their doings, which are deeds of light, done in truth and in sincerity, 
even as they are themselves sons of the day and of the light, are con- 
trasted with the deeds of darkness, the hidden things of dishonesty, which 
are wrought by the children of this world, and of which this'child of the 
present world, who plays the chief part in the parable before us, has just 
given a notable specimen. 

The declaration itself has been differently understood, according as 
the words that are wanting to complete the sentence have been differently 
supplied. Some complete it thus : — M The children of this world are 
wiser in their generation" namely, in worldly things, " than the children 
of light" are in those same worldly things, that is, Earthly men are 
more prudent than spiritual men in earthly things ; those earthly things 
are their element, their world ; they are more at home in them ; they 
give more thought, they bestow more labor, on these matters, and there- 
fore succeed in them better : though it be true that this is only as owls 
see better than eagles — in the dark.* But it is hard to see how a gen- 
eral statement of this kind bears on the parable, which most are agreed 
urges upon the Christian, not prudence in earthly things by the example 
of the worldling's prudence in the same, but rather, by the example of 
the worldling's prudence in these things, urges upon him prudence in 
heavenly. 

Others, then, are nearer the truth who complete the sentence thus : 
" The children of this ivorld are iviser in their generation" (in worldly 
matters) " than tJie children of light" in theirs, that is, in heavenly mat- 
ters ; the children of light being thus rebuked that they are not at half 
the pains to win heaven which the men of this world are to win earth — 
that they are less provident in heavenly things than those are in earthly 
— that the world is better served by its servants than God is by his. This 
is the meaning, as it is rightly, though somewhat too vaguely, given by 
many; for it is only perfectly seized when we see in the words, "in their 
generation," or as they ought to be translated, — " unto," or " towards 
their generation,"! an allusion, which has been strangely often missed, 

* So Cajetan: Filii hujus saeculi sunt filiis lucis prudentiores, non absolute, sed 
in natione tenebrosa, sicut noctuae melius vident in tenebris animalibus diurnis. 
t Ets tV yeveav t))v kavTwv, which Theophylact explains iv ra> &iu> tovtw : but 



358 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

to the debtors in the parable. They, the ready accomplices in the stew 
ard's fraud, showed themselves to be men of the same generation as he 
was, — they were all of one race, children of the ungodly world ; and the 
Lord's declaration is, that the men of this world make their intercourse 
with one another more profitable, — obtain more from it, — manage it bet- 
ter for their interests, such as those are, than do the children of light their 
intercourse with one another. For what opportunities, he would imply 
are missed by these last, by those among them to whom a share of the 
earthly mammon is intrusted, — what opportunities of laying up treasure 
in heaven — of making them friends for the time t-o come by showing love 
to the poor saints, — or generally of doing offices of kindness to the house- 
hold of faith — to the men of the same generation as themselves, whom 
yet they make not, as they might, receivers of benefits, from which they 
themselves should hereafter reap a hundred-fold. 

In the following verse the Lord exhorts his disciples not to miss these 
opportunities, but by the example of him who bound to himself by bene- 
fits the men of his generation, so should they in like manner, by benefits, 
bind those who were like themselves children of light, and make friends 
of them ; # — " And I say unto you, Make to your selves friends of the mam- 
then he has first changed els tV yeveav into ev rfj yevea. and as if it were so, it is 
translated in the Vulgate, in generatione sua. Mr. Greswell has well shown {Exp. 
of the Par., v. 4, p. 52) how untenable such a translation of the words is, which, 
indeed, could never hare been so much as entertained, except on the principle 
which, in the interpreting of Scripture, has been so often adopted, — that preposi- 
tions have no meaning in particular, but may be made to mean any thing which it 
seems convenient for the moment that they should mean. It was convenient to 
turn els into ev, because it seemed to give some meaning to the words, though not 
a very satisfactory one. But even the convenience disappears, when we once re- 
gard the debtors of the parable as the men of the same yevea. as the steward, and 
that here is allusion to them, for all then is easy and plain, and this while there is 
no force applied to the words, and they are allowed their full rights. Storr ( Opi^sc. 
Acad., v. 3. p. 117) gives rightly the meaning of this verse: Rebus terrenis unicd 
inhiantes (ol viol r. chuv. t.), ut ceconomas inductus (v. 1, 3, 4) prudentia erga suam 
familiam (els r. yev. r. eavr.), hoc est, erga idem sentientes, qui pariter ac ipsi sunt 
viol t. aluv. t. tout, erga fratres suos, terrena similiter inhiantes (cf. v. 5-7) ante- 
cedere solent lucis ac beatitatis sempiternge (v. 9-12) cupidos, qui saepe non ita 
(cf. v. 4) student familiam suam (t. yev. r. iavr.) hoc est, lucis item cupidos (aaqufe 
cum ipsis vlovs r. <pcoTbs) et els r. alwv. o-K-qvas perventuros (v. 9), ipsumque com- 
munem familise Dominum (Matt. xxv. 40), benefices sibi devincire, ut igitur tanto 
magis fuerit opus, admonitionem inculcare qua3 sequitur, Luc. xvi. 9. "Weisse 
(Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 161) translates the words els r. yev. r. iavr. rightly, Im 
Verkher mit ihres Gleichen ; but Neander too vaguely, Yon ihrem Standpunkte. 
— For a masterly disposal of the loose theory that els and ev are ever promiscuously 
and interchangeably used in the Greek Testament, see "Winer's Grammatik, 
p. 392, seq. 

* Yet at the same time, who could be entirely satisfied with such a summing 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 359 

mon of unrighteousness, tliat tvJien ye fail, they may receive you inU 
everlasting habitations." This " mammon of unrighteousness" some 
explain as wealth unjustly gotten,* by fraud and by violence, " treasures 
of wickedness " (Prov. x. 2) ; but plainly the first recommendation to the 
possessors of such would be to restore it to its rightful owners, as Zac- 
chseus, on his conversion, expressed his determination to do (Luke xix. 
8), for " he that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is 
ridiculous" (Sirac. xxxiv. 18; and see xxxv. 12), and out of such there 
could never be offered accepted alms to that God who has said, " I hate 
robbery for burnt-offering." Only when this restoration is impossible.! 
which of course must continually be the case, could it be lawfully be- 
stowed upon the poor. Others again say that it is not exactly wealth 
which the present possessor has unjustly acquired, but that wealth which 
from the very nature of the world and the world's business can scarcely 
ever have been gotten together without sin somewhere, — without some- 
thing of the defilement of the world from which it was gathered clinging 
to it : \ if not sin in the present possessor, yet in some of those, nearer or 

up of the parable as that given by Calvin : Summa hujus parabolas est, humaniter 
et benigne cum proximis nostris esse agendum, ut quum ad Dei tribunal ventum 
fuerit, liberalitatis nostras fructus ad nos redeat. Who does not feel that there must 
be something more in it than merely this *? for if this only, why an unjust steward 1 
This is at the same time the point which the early Church writers mainly, often 
exclusively, make, — that the parable is an earnest exhortation to liberal almsgiving. 
So Irenaeus (Con. Har., 1. 4, c. 30), Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, c. 27), Athana- 
sius, Theophylact; so also Erasmus, Luther, who says, "It is a sermon on good 
works and especially against avarice, that men abuse not wealth, but therewith 
help poor and needy people," — and many more. 

* The words so interpreted would be easily open to abuse, as though a man 
might compound with his conscience and with God, and by giving some small por- 
tion of alms out of unjustly acquired wealth, make the rest clean unto him. Plu- 
tarch speaks thus of some, airb UpovvXias SreoaePovvres, and Augustine affirms 
(Serm. 113, c. 2) that such abuse' of the words was actually made : Hoc quidam 
male intelligendo rapiunt res alienas, et aliquid inde pauperibus largiuntur, et 
putunt se facere quod- praeceptum est. Dicunt enim, rapere res alienas, mammona 
est iniquitatis: erogare inde aliquid, maxime egentibus Sanctis, hoc est facere 
amicos de mammona iniquitatis. Intellectus iste corrigendus est, imd de tabulis 
cordis vestri omnino delendus est. 

f Thus the Jewish ProverD, Pastorum. exactorum, et publicanorum restitutio 
est difficilis. . 

% In this sense Jerome quotes the proverb, Dives aut iniquus aut iniqui haeres, 
as illustrative of the parable : and Cajetan says, it is called mammon of unrighteous- 
ness, E6 quod rarae vel nullae sunt divitiae, in quarum congregatione seu conversa- 
tione non intervenerit peccatum, vel habentium. vel ministrorum, vel patrum seu 
avorum. We might quote in this view. Sirac. xxvii. 2 : " As a nail sticketh fast 
between the joinings of the stones, so doth sin stick close between buying and 
selling." Augustine ( Quast. Evang., 1.2, qu. 34) : Quia non sunt istae divitiaa 
nisi iniquis, qui in eis constituunt spem atque copiam beatitudinis suae. Cf. Serm. 



360 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

more remote, from or through, whom he received it : and so inheriting 
the wealth, he has inherited the obligation to make good the wrongs com- 
mitted in the getting it together. But the comparison with ver. 12, 
where K unrigliteous mammon," a phrase of course equivalent to ' ; mam- 
mon of unrighteousness, 11 is set against "true riches" — these true being 
evidently heavenly enduring gOvyds, such as neither fade nor fail, — makes 
it far more probable that the " ?nammon of unriglvteousness" is the uncer- 
tain, unstable mammon, that which is one man's to-day, and another's 
to-morrow ; which if a man trust in, he is sure to be trusting in a vain 
and deceitful thing, that will sooner or later prove false and betray his 
confidence, so that he will find that trusting in it he will have trusted in 
a lie.* And " mammon of uyirighteousness" it may in a deeper sense be 



50, c. 4. Turtullian's explanation {Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 33) is a little different; 
money is so called because the love of it is the root of all evil : Injustitiae enim, 
auctorem, et dominatorem totius seculi nummum scimus ornnes : Melancthon, — 
because of the manifold abuses that are almost inseparably connected with it : 
Yocat mammonam injustam non quod sint injuste parte [divitiae], non quod contra 
conscientiam occupatse sint, sed propter abusus multiplices, qui in hac infirmitate 
humani generis sequi solent. (See Eccles., v. 13.) 

One would be glad to find true the assertion that mammon (which I believe 
would more correctly be spelt with a single m) was the name of a Syrian god, who 
was worshipped as presiding over wealth, in the same way as Plutus is the god of 
riches in the Greek mythology — for so the antithesis in the words, <! Ye cannot 
serve God and mammon,"' would come out more strongly, — Ye cannot serve the true 
God and an idol or false god at once. But there is no satisfactory proof of the 
assertion. It is repeated by Schleusner, who makes, as usual, references which he 
has evidently never verified, — one to Tertullian [a Syris religiosfe colebetur, teste 
Tertulliano] who says nothing of the kind, Adv. Marc. 1. 4, c. 33, which must be 
the passage meant : and another, which being followed up, proves only that an 
obscure grammarian of the eleventh century said so. Neither Augustine {De 
Serm. Dom. in Mon., 1. 2), nor Jerome {Ad Algas., qu. 6), who both explain the 
word, give a hint of the kind. All that Augustine says there, or Serm. 113. c. 2, 
is this : Quod Punici dicunt mammon, Latine lucrum vocatur : quod Hebraei dicunt 
mairuxona, Latinfe divitiae vocantur, — and Jerome no more. The erroneous notion 
belongs to the middle ages. Thus Pet. Lombard (1. 2, dist. 6) : Nomine dasmonis 
divitire vocantur, scilicet Mammona. Est enim Mammon nomen dsemonis, quo 
nomine vocantur divitiae secunditm Syram linguam. — See a good note by Drusius 
in the Crlt. Sac. (in loc.) 

* The use of &$ikos for "false" runs through the whole Septuagint. Thus, 
Deut. xix. 16. ixdprvs &Bikos, a false witness; and ver. 18, ifxaprvprjo-ey &diKa, he hath 
witnessed falsely. See Prov. vi. 19; xii. 17; Jer. v. 31, "The prophets prophecy 
falsely" (#5</ca), and many more examples might be adduced. So here the "un- 
righteous" mammon is the false mammon, that which will betray the reliance 
which is placed on it, which we must leave, or which will leave us. (Prov. xxiii. 5.) 
Thus larpoi &8ikoi (Job xiii.'4), "physicians of no value." So our Lord speaks of 
the a7raT77 rod ttXovtuv ; and Paul (1 Tim. vi. 17) bids Timothy to warn the rich 
that they trust not iirl wXovrov a57j\<$TTjTt. 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 361 

justly called, since it is certain that in all wealth a principle of evil is 
implied ; for in a perfect state of society — in a realized kingdom of God 
upon earth — there would be no such thing as property belonging to one 
man more than another. In the moment of the Church's first love, when 
that kingdom was for an instant realized, u all that believed were together, 
and had all things common ;* and this existence of property has ever 
been so strongly felt as a witness for the selfishness of man, that in all 
ideas of a perfect commonwealth, — which, if perfect, must of course be a 
Church as well as a State — from Plato's down to the Socialists', this of 
the communion of goods has made a necessary condition. So that though 
the possessor of the wealth, or those who transmitted it to him, may have 
fairly acquired it, yet it is not less this "unrighteous" mammon, witness- 
ing in its very existence as one man's and not every man's, for the cor- 
ruption and fall and selfishness of man, — for the absence of that highest 
love, which would have made each man feel that whatever was his, was 
also every one's beside, and rendered it impossible that a mine and thine 
should ever have existed. With all this, we must not of course forget 
that the attempt prematurely to realize this or any other little fragment 
or corner of the kingdom of God, apart -from the rest — the corruption 
and evil of man's heart remaining unremoved, and being either over- 
looked or denied — has ever been one -of the most fruitful sources of the 
worst mischiefs in the world. 

The words, " that when ye fail"] are of course an euphemistic way 

* Augustine : In animam unam et cor unum conflati caritatis igne, quorum 
nemo dicebat aliquid proprium: and {Enarr. in Ps. lxviii.) he explains "mammon 
of unrighteousness :" Fortasse ea ipsa est iniquitas quia tu habes et alter non habet, 
tu abundus et alter eget; as he says elsewhere in the same spirit: Res alienee 
possidentur, cum superfluas possidentis. Thus Aquinas : Divitiae iniquitatis, i. e. 
inaequalitatis ; of which one has so much, and another so little. 

f It may perhaps be a question whether the other reading, €K\iirrj (' : that when 
it fails," i. e., the mammon), be not to be preferred. It is decidedly so by Schulz 
{ub. d. Par. v. Vericalter, p. 81). though he allows that as regards number of MSS. 
it is supported by inferior authority. Many however of the oldest versions bear 
witness for that reading which Lachmann has also admitted into his text ; yet not 
the Vulgate, which has. cam defeceritis, nor yet the older Latin (Irenjeus. Con. 
Hcer., 1. 4. c. 49). quando fugati fueritis. "We certainly have more than one word 
of the same family, to show how fitly ix\elirett> might be used in the sense which 
would thus be given it: thus frqaavpbv aveK\elirTov (Luke xii. 33). o.v^k\ittt}s &e<ravp6s 
(TTisd. vii. 14), ttXovtos aveK\nrr)s (TVisd. viii. 16). But on the other hand it may 
be said that exteiireiv is also frequently used for the failing of men through death 
from the earth, of which any Lexicon of the Septuagint will supply many ex- 
amples. Should iicXl-ny be preferred, the words of Seneca (De Bencf, 1. 6. c. 3) 
will afford a striking parallel : Egregifc mihi videtur M. Antonius apud Rabiriura 
poetam. cum fortunam suam transeuntem ali6 videbat et sibi nihil relictum . . . 
exclamare : Hoc habeo. quodcumque dedi. quantum habere potuit, ei voluis* 
set ! Has sunt divitiae certae, in quacunque sortis humanae levitate, uno loco per- 



362 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

of saying, " that when ye die." Many, however, have been unwilling to 
refer the words that follow, " tJiey may receive you" to the friends which 
were to be made by help of the unrighteous mammon ; such an applica- 
tion seeming to them to attribute too much to men and to their inter- 
cession, to imply a right on their parts who had received the benefits, to 
introduce their benefactors into everlasting habitations, — and so to be 
trenching on the prerogative which is God's alone. Thus it has been 
sometimes said "they" are the angels, as we find angels (ver. 22) carry- 
ing Lazarus into Abraham's bosom ; or others understand that it is God 
and Christ who it is meant will receive ; others again say, that the 
phrase is impersonal, even as it is certain that St. Luke more than once 
uses the plural impersonally (xii. 11, 20; xxiii. 31), so that "tliey may 
receive you" would be equivalent to, " You may be received." But if 
we look at this verse, not as containing an isolated doctrine, but as stand- 
ing in close and living connection with the parable which has just pre- 
ceded it, and of which it gives the moral, we shall at once perceive how 
this phrase comes here to be used, and its justification. There is plainly 
allusion here to the debtors ; they, being made friends, were to receive 
the deposed steward into temporary habitations ; and the present phrase 
is an echo of what had just gone before in regard to him and them, by 
UsiDg which in his practical application of the parable, our .Lord throws 
back light upon that, and at once fixes the attention of his hearers upon, 
and explains, its most important part. It is idle to press the words 
further, and against all analogy of faith to assert, on the strength of this 
single phrase, that with any except God, that even with his glorified 
saints, there will reside power of their own to admit into the kingdom of 
heaven ; but idle too, on the other hand to affirm, that " they may receive 
you" in the second clause of the sentence, can refer to any other but the 
friends mentioned in the first — which no one, unless alarmed by the con- 
sequences which others might draw from the words, could possibly for 
an instant call in question.* The true parallel to, and at once the ex- 
planation and the guard of, this passage, is evidently Matt. xxv. 34-40. 

niansurae : quae quo majores fuerint, hoc minorem habebunt invidiam. Quid tan- 
quani tuo parcis 1 Procurator es . . . Quzeris quomodo ilia tua facias 1 donando. 
Consule ergo rebus tuis et certain tibi earum et inexpugnabilem possessionem 
para : honestiores illas non soliim, sed tutiores facturus. 

* Cocceius : A^wvrai posset intelligi impersonaliter, . . . sed filum parabola] 
postulat ut referatur ad amicos. Non quod homines suis meritis possint recipere in 
seterna tabernacula, sed quod fillis Dei laetantibus, applaudentibus, et in Deo ac 
Spiritu ejus volentibus, a Deo recipiantur ii, qui amici ipsorum esse voluerint. 
Voluntas justorum et beatorum est efficax, quia est <pp6vrifia rod wev/jLaros, Rom. 
viii. 27. Cf. Augustine, Qucest. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 38; and Gerhard (Loc. TJlcoIL, 
»oc. 27, c. 8, () 3) : Recipiunt nos turn precibus in hac vita turn testimonio ac 
tuffragio in die judicii. 



THE UNJUST STEWARD. 363 

The heavenly habitations being termed "everlasting"* are thus tacitly 
contrasted with the temporary shelter which was all that the steward, 
the child of the present world, procured for himself with all his plotting 
and planning, his cunning and his dishonesty, — also, it may be, with the 
temporary stewardship which every man exercises on earth, from which 
it is not long before he fails and is removed : — how important it is there- 
fore, the word will imply, that he should make sure his entrance into a 
kingdom that shall not be removed. f 

In the verses which follow (10-13), and which stand in vital cohe- 
rence with the parable, it is very observable that not prudence, but 
faithful '/less, in the dispensation of the things earthly is especially com- 
mended ; so to put far away any possible abuse of the parable, as though 
the unfaithfulness of the steward there could have found any thing but 
the strongest reprobation from Christ ; just as in another place (Matt. 
x. 16), when he said, "Be wise as serpents," lest this wisdom should 
degenerate into cunning, he immediately guarded the precept, adding, 
" and harmless as doves." The things earthly whereof men have a dis- 
pensation, and wherein they may show their faithfulness and their fit- 
ness to be intrusted with a higher stewardship, are slightingly called, 
" that which is least" as compared with those spiritual gifts and graces 
which are " much ;" they are termed " unrighteous" or deceitful, " mam- 
mon" as set against the heavenly riches of faith and love, which are 
" true" and durable " riclies ;" they are called " tliat which is anotJier 
maris"% by comparison with the heavenly goods, which when possessed 

* These aluvioi, those 7rp6<TKaipot. The term <TKT)iri) h the tent which was pitched 
at evening and struck in the morning, or the temporary "booth (Lev. xxiii. 40-43) 
erected with planks and branches, itself implies any thing but a fixed and lasting 
habitation ; on the contrary, it is directly set against such, Heb. xi. 9, 10, where it 
is said that Abraham dwelt in tabernacles (o-K-nvais), while he looked for a city 
which hath foundations. And the image from the unstable cKt\vh is used by 
Hezekiah to set forth the briefness of life (Isai. xxxviii. 12) : "Mine age is depart- 
ed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent." See Job xxvii. 18 ; 2 Cor. v. 1. 
Thus too the temporary sojourning of the Son of God on the earth is. a <xkt\vovv. 
(John i. 14.) But these ffKt)vai are aldviot, they are /xovai (John xiv. 2), being 
pitched by God, "a tabernacle that shall not be taken down" (<ricr\va\ at ob ^ 
<rci<r&u<Tiv, LXX.), "not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither 
shall any of the cords thereof be broken." (Isai. xxxiii. 20.) It is not accurate 
to adduce 2 Cor. v. 1 here as a parallel, for the " building of God, the house not- 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens," of which St. Paul there speaks, is 
plainly not the abiding heavenly mansions, but the glorified body, as contrasted 
with "our earthly house of this tabernacle," or our present body, rb yewBes cktjvos, 
as it is called, "Wisd. ix. 15. 

f So according to Diodorus Siculus the Egyptians called the houses of the 
living na.ToKv(reis, but of the dead aidlovs oXkovs. Compare Eccles. xii. 5, : ' Man 
goeth to his long home." (ptnov aluvos avrod, LXX.) 

t Divitise non vene nee vestrae, as Augustine terms them. 



364 THE UNJUST STEWARD. 

are our own, not something merely without us, but which become a part 
of our very selves, assimilating to our truest life. Thus the Lord at 
once casts a slight on the things worldly and temporal, while yet at the 
same time he magnifies the importance of a right administration of 
them ; since in the dispensing of these, — which he declares to be the 
least, — to be false and without any intrinsic worth, — to be alien from 
man's essential being, he yet also declares that a man may prove his fi- 
delity, will inevitably show what is in him, and whether he be fit to be 
intrusted with that which has a true and enduring value, with a ministra- 
tion in the kingdom of God.* And in ver. 13 he further states what 
the fidelity is, which in this stewardship is required : — it is a choosing 
of God instead of mammon for our lord. For in this world we are in 
the condition of servants from whom two masters are claiming allegi: 
ance — one is God, man's rightful lord, the other is this unrighteous 
mammon, which was given to be our servant, to be wielded by us in 
God's interests, and in itself to be considered by us as something slight, 
transient, and another's — but which has, in a sinful world, erected itself 
into a lord, and now demands obedience from us, which if we yield, 
we can be no longer faithful servants and stewards of God's. We 
shall no longer lay out according to his will that which he indeed 
gave us to be merely a thing beneath us, but which we have allowed to 
have a will and a voice of its own, and to speak to us in accents of 
command. We cannot any longer be faithful servants of God, for that 
upstart lord has a will so different from his will, gives commands so 
opposite to his, that occasions must speedily arise when one or other will 
have to be slighted, despised, and disobeyed, if the other be regarded, 
honored, and served ;f — God, for instance, will command a scattering, 
when mammon will urge to a further heaping and gathering ; God will 
require spending upon others, when mammon, or the world, a spending 
upon our own lusts. Therefore, these two lords having characters so 
different, and giving commands so opposite, it will be impossible to re- 
concile their service (Jam. iv. 4), — one must be despised, if the other is 

* The Jews have various sayings and parables concerning the manner in 
which God proves men in little things, to try whether they are worthy to be 
intrusted with great. Thus they say of David, that God tried him first with 
"those few sheep in the wilderness," which because he faithfully and boldly kept 
(1 Sam. xvii. 34-36), therefore God " took him from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob 
his people, and Israel his inheritance " (Ps. lxxviii. 70, 71). See Schoettgen's 
Hot. Heb. v. 1, p. 300. 

f Stella has a lively comparison in illustration of this : Si duobus hominibus 
aliqua via incedentibus canis sequitur, non facile judicare poteris uter illorum 
Dominus ejus sit. Caeterum si alter ab altero discedat, statim apparet clarissime 
quis Dominus sit. Canis enim, ignoto relieto, ad notum accedit, eumque Dominum 
esse suum clar& ostendit. 



THE UNJUST STEWAKD. 365 

held to ; the only faithfulness to the one is to break with the other ; 
" Ye cannot serve* God and mammon?' 1 Such appears to me to be the 
connection between ver. 13 and the preceding verses, and between tho 
whole of these verses and the parable of which they surely are intended 
to give the moral, f 

* Aov\eveiv, to which word its full force is to be given, a force which Chrysos- 
tom excellently brings out, when after noting how Abraham and Job were rich, 
and yet found favor with God, he goes on to observe that it was because each oi 
these though rich, ovk i$ov\e<re t$ j ua / u/x«j>S, aAA' ^X ej/ mtov nal iKpdrei Kal 5eair6T7}s 
\<xvtov] ov SovXos -f\v. See also Suicer, S. V. SouAeuw. 

f Among the many strange explanations to which this parable has given birth, 
perhaps one of the strangest is recorded by Jerome {Ad Algas., Ep. 121, qu. 6), 
who quotes it from the Commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch. Accord- 
ing to this, the unjust steward is the apostle Paul, who was forcibly thrust out by 
God of his Judaism, and being so, made himself a reception in many hearts, 
through the declaring the Gospel of the grace of God. — of the remission of sins ; 
and for this had praise, that he had well done, " being changed from the austerity 
of the Law to the clemency of the Gospel." But I see that elsewhere {De Script. 
Ecclcs.) Jerome doubts the genuineness of the Commentaries extant in his time 
under the name of Theophilus. This is only outdone by a modern writer mention- 
ed by Unger {De Par. Jes. Nat., p. 85), who affirms the Lord to have meant him- 
self by the unjust steward ! It sounds almost irreverent to mention in immediate 
juxtaposition with this, that Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot have been proposed 
as the persons by him represented. But the meanest and most grovelling of all 
expositions is given by Hartmann {Comm. de (Econ. Improbo, Lips. 1830) of which 
it will suffice to say that the author explains ver. 9 to mean this : Make to your- 
selves friends of those that are rich in this world (this is his interpretation of 'EK t. 
uafx. t. <x5iK.), that when through any mishap you get low in the world, you may be 
sure of a retreat for the remainder of your days. In "Wolf's Cum, and Kocher's 
Analecta, other extravagant interpretations may be found, which it would be littla 
worth while to repeat. 



XXVI. 

THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS, 

Luke xvi. 19-31. 

It must be acknowledged that the connection of verses 15-18 with one 
another, and of all with this parable, is not easy to trace, while yet to 
say,, as Hammond and others do, that St. Luke has here thrown toge- 
ther various sayings of our Lord's, uttered on very different occasions, 
is a most unsatisfactory explanation ; — for what should they do here ? or 
how have'they come to be here introduced? But however loosely strung 
together, at first sight, verses 15-18 may appear, there is a thread of 
connection running through them all, and afterwards joining them with 
the parable, — there is one leading thought throughout, namely, that in 
all is contained rebuke and threatening for the Pharisees. They had 
heard the Lord's exhortation to a large and liberal bounty, his warning 
to his disciples that they should not attempt to serve at once God and 
the world, — and they testified by look and gesture, and it may be also 
openly in words, their dislike of the doctrine, and scorn of the teacher ; 
— " The Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and 
they derided him."* "Whereupon he turned and addressed to them the 
discourse, which had hitherto been to the disciples, and rebuked, first 
their hypocrisy ; — while they were covetous,! that is, while their hearts 
were secretly given to the world, they yet would be accounted to love 
God above all things, — they sought a reputation for holiness and right- 
eousness before men ; but he proceeds, highly esteemed as they were 
among men, they and their pretences were abomination before God, 
who. knoweth the hearts. It is then announced to them (ver. 16) how 
that dispensation, of which they were the stewards and administrators, 

* 'E&fxvKT-fipi&j/ ovt6v. 

■f The <pi\apyvpla here attributed to the Pharisees is to be taken in that widest 
and deepest sense, in which it is the f>ifa irdurow rut/ k<xk£>v (1 Tim. vi. 10), the 
dependence upon and trust in the world rather than in God. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 367 

was passing away ; " The law and the prophets were unto John ;" their 
stewardship is coming to an end, and a larger dispensation, in which 
they shall no more have the " key of knowledge" to admit or to ex- 
clude, is begun : " The kingdom of God is preached, and. every man 
presseth into it." Yet not that the law itself was to be abolished, for that 
would be eternal as the God that gave it (ver. 17), being the expression 
of his perfections and holy will : which when it was so, how great was 
their guilt, who, while they pretended to be zealous for its honor, the 
guardians of its purity, were continually tampering with it in some of 
its most sacred enactments, as in those concerning marriage (ver. 18), 
and relaxing its obligations ; and thereupon the parable follows. 

But that being evidently addressed to the Pharisees, a difficulty at 
once presents itself. They were, indeed, "covetous" (ver. 14), lovers 
of money, but prodigal excess in living, like that of the rich man, is no- 
where, either in history or in Scripture, imputed to them. On the con- 
trary, we learn from contemporary historical* sources, that they were 
remarkably sparing and abstemious in their manner of life, many of 
them rigid ascetics : and among all the severe rebukes which our Lord 
addressed to them, the sin of luxury and prodigal excess is nowhere laid 
to their charge. Their sins were in the main spiritual, and what other 
sins they had were such as were compatible with a high reputation for 
spirituality, which covetousness is, but a profuse self-indulgence and an 
eminently luxurious living is not. Mosheim feels the difficulty so 
strongly, that he supposes the parable to have been directed against the 
Sadducees,! of whose selfish indulgence of themselves, and hard-hearted 
contempt for the needs of others (for they had wrought into their very 
religious scheme that poverty was a crime, or at least an evidence of the 
displeasure of God), he says we shall then have an exact description. 
But the parable cannot be for them, there is nothing to make it probable 
that Sadducees were present, neither can there be any change between 
ver. 18 and 19 in the persons addressed ; this will appear yet more evi- 
dent in the original than in our version, which has omitted the particle 
which marks the continuity and unbroken tenor of the discourse, and to 
give the force of which, the parable ought to begin not simply, " There 
was," but, u Now tliere was a certain rich man." 

The explanation, however, seems to be the following. While it is 
quite true that covetousness was the sin of the Pharisees, and not prodi- 

* Josephus (Antt., xviii. 1, 3) says of them, tV Mairav e£euTe\i£bu<n;/, olZiu h 
rh /j.a\a.K(x>Tepov tv8i$6mes, and that the Sadducees mocked them for their fasts and 
austerities. t 

t De Rcb. Christ, ante Const., p. 49. So also "Wetstein, who says of the 
Pharisees, jejunahant crebr6, modestius vestiebantur. This frequent fasting (Luke 
xviii. 12), could not be reconciled with the faring sumptuously every day. 



368 THE KICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

gal excess in living, while it was rather an undue gathering, than an 
undue spending, yet hoarding and squandering so entirely grow out of 
the same evil root, are so equally the consequences of unbelief in God 
and in God's word — of trust in the creature rather than in the Creator, 
are so equally a serving of mammon (though the form of the service 
may he different), that when the Lord would rebuke their sin, which 
was the love of the world and trust in the world rather than in the liv- 
ing God, there was nothing to hinder his taking his example from a sin 
opposite in appearance to theirs — which yet was one springing out of 
exactly the same evil condition of heart, — by which to condemn them. 
For it ought never to be left out of sight or forgotten, that it is not the 
primary purpose of the parable to teach the fearful consequences which 
will follow on the abuse of wealth and on the hard-hearted contempt of 
the poor, — this only subordinate^ — but the fearful consequences of 
unbelief, of having the heart set on this world, and refusing to give cre- 
dence to the invisible world which is here known only to faith, until by 
a miserable and too late experience, the existence of such an unseen 
world has been discovered. The sin of Dives in its root is unbelief: 
hard-hearted contempt of the poor, luxurious squandering on self, are 
only the forms which it takes ; the seat of the disease is within, these 
are but the running sores which witness for the inward plague. He who 
believes not in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spirit- 
ual joy, must of necessity place his hope in the things which he sees, 
which he can touch, and taste, and smell, — will come to trust in them, 
and to look to them for his blessedness, for he knows of no other : it is 
not of the essence of the matter, whether he hoards or squanders, in 
either case he sets his hope on the world. He who believes not in a' God 
delighting in mercy and loving-kindness, and that will be an abundant 
rewarder of them that have showed mercy, and severe punisher of all 
that have refused to show it, will soon come to shut up his bowels of 
compassion from his brethren, whether that so he may place more money 
in his chest, or have more to spend upon his own lusts. This was the 
sin of Dives and the origin of all his other sins, that he believed not in 
this higher world, which is apprehended by faith, — a world not merely 
beyond the grave, — but a kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and love 
existing even in the midst of this cruel and wicked world ; and this too 
was the sin of the worldly-minded Pharisees : and his punishment was, 
that he made the discovery of the existence of that truer state of things 
only to his own unutterable and irremediable loss. His unbelief shows 
itself again in his supposing that his brethren would give heed to a ghost, 
while they refused to give heed to the sure word of God, — to Moses and 
the prophets. For it is of the very essence of unbelief, that it gives that 
credence to portents and prodigies which it refuses to the truth of God. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 369 

Caligula, who mocked at the existence of the gods, would hide himself 
under a bed when it thundered ;* and superstition and incredulity are 
evermore twin brothers. It is most important to keep in mind that this, 
the rebuke of unbelief, is the aim and central thought of the parable ; 
for if we conceive of its primary purpose as to warn against the abuse 
of riches, it will neither satisfactorily cohere with the discourse in which 
it is found, nor will the parable itself possess that unity of purpose, that 
tending of all its parts to a single centre, which so remarkably distin- 
guishes the other parables of our Lord : it will seem to divide itself into 
two parts, which are only slightly linked together, — to have not a single 
but a double point.f But when we pierce deeper into the heart of the 
matter, and contemplate unbelief as the essence of the rich man's sin, 
and his hard heartedness towards others with his prodigality towards 
himself only as the forms in which it showed itself, we shall then at 
once admire the perfect unity of all its parts, and the vital connection of 
the conversation with Abraham in the latter part, with the sumptuous 
fare, the "purple and fine linen" of the earlier. 

But before proceeding to examine the parable in its details, it is 
worthy of notice, that besides the literal and obvious, there has also 
ever been an allegorical interpretation of it, which, though at no time 
the dominant one in the Church, has frequently made itself heard, and 
which has been suggested by Augustine, by Gregory the Great, by 
Theophylact, and by more modern commentators than one. Accord- 
ing to this the parable, like so many others exclusively given by St'. 
Luke, sets forth the past and future relations of the Jew and Gentile. 
Dives is the Jew, or the Jewish nation, clothed in the purple of the king 
and the fine linen of the priest, the ."kingdom of priests." He fares 
sumptuously, — that is, the Jews are richly provided with all spiritual 
privileges, not hungering and thirsting after the righteousness of Godj 
but full of their own righteousness ; and who, instead of seeking to im- 
part their own blessings to the Gentiles — to the miserable Lazarus that 
lay covered with sores at their gate — rather glorified themselves by 
comparison in their exclusive possession of the knowledge and favor of 
God. To them is announced — that is, to the Pharisees, who might be 
considered as the representatives of the nation, for in them all that was 
evil in the Jewish spirit was concentrated — that an end is approaching, 
nay ; has come upon them already : Lazarus and Dives are both to die— 



* Suetonius, Caligula, c. 51. 

•j* One of the latest impugners of the accuracy of the Evangelical records, as wo 
possess them (TTeisse, Evang. Gesch., v. 2, p. 168), has brought forward this very 
objection, only showing thereby how entirely he has himself failed to enter into 
the spirit of the parable. 
24 



370 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

the former state of things is to "be utterly abolished. Lazarus is to be 
earried by angels into Abraham's bosom — in other words, the believing 
Gentiles are to be brought by the messengers of the new covenant into 
the peace and consolations of the Gospel. But Dives is to be cast into 
hell, — the Jews are to forfeit all the privileges which they abused, and 
will find themselves in the most miserable condition, exiles from the 
presence of God, and with his wrath abiding upon them to the utter- 
most, so that they shall seek in vain for some, even the slightest, alle- 
viation of their woful estate. 

If the present had been expressly named a parable, it would tend 
somewhat to confirm this or some similar interpretation ;* for according 
to that commonly received, it is certainly no parable, the very essence 
of that order of composition being, that one set of persons and things 
is named, another is signified — they are set over against one another ; 
but here the rich man would mean a rich man, and the poor man a poor 
— the purple and fine linen would mean purple and fine linen, and so on. 
Thus, in fact, the question concerning which there has been such a va- 
riety of opinion from the first, namely, whether this be a parable, or a 
history (real or fictitious, it matters not), does in fact wholly depend on 
the manner in which it is interpreted : if the ordinary interpretation be 
the right one, it is certainly not, in the strictest sense of the word, a 

* Teelman, in an elaborate essay {Com. in Luc. xvi.), has wrought out an ex- 
planation in part similar to this, but also with important differences. In this too, 
Dives is the Jewish people, but by Lazarus is signified Christ, rejected and despised 
by the proud nation, and full of sores, that is, bearing the sins of his people, 
wounded and bruised for their iniquities. (Isai. liii. 3-5.) Yitringa gives the 
same explanation {Erlddr. der Parab,, p. 939), but it is not modern, for it is 
mentioned by Augustine (Qucest. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 38): Lazarum Dominum signi- 
ficare accipiamus . . . jacentem ad januam divitis, quia se ad aures superbissimas 
Judaeorum Incarnationis humilitate dejecit. (2 Cor. viii. 9.) . . . . Ulcera passio- 
'nes sunt Domini ex infirmitate carnis, quam pro nobis suscipere dignatus est ... . 
Sinus Abrahse, secretum Patris, quo post passionem resurgens assumptus est 
Dominus. It is to be found also in Ambrose (Exp. in Luc, 1. 8, c. 15) : Cui 
[Lazaro] similem ilium puto, qui caesus saepius a Judaeis, ad patientiam creden- 
tium et vocationem gentium ulcera sui corporis lambenda quibusdam velut canibus 
•offerebat; and than he quotes Matt. xv. 27. See also Gill's Exp. of the N. T. (in 
loc.) — Schleiermacher's supposition that Herod Antipas, infamous for his incestu- 
ous marriage (see ver. 18), is pointed at in Dives is sufficiently curious, and one 
might be tempted at first to suppose, original. Yet this interpretation, in its germ 
at least, is to be found in Tertullian {Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 34). He too sees in ver. 
18 an allusion to Herod's marriage, and observes that the connection is closer than 
at first sight appears, between that verse and the parable which follows : Nam et 
illud [scil. argumentum parabola?] quantum ad Scripture superficiem, subit6 pro- 
positum est, quantum ad intentioncm sensus ct ipsum cohaeret mentioni Joannig 
malfe tractati, et sugillatui Herodis malfe maritati, utriusque exitum deformans, 
Elerodis tormenta et Joannis refrigeria. 



THE EICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 371 

parable : if that above proposed, or one similar, it is.* Nor will it, say 
those who support the allegorical explanation, even if that be admitted, 
'lose any of its obvious practical value: it will still, as before, be a warn- 
ing against trust in the creature, a declaration of the fearful conse- 
quences of unbelief, only that the lower selfishness of the flesh will be 
used as a symbol to set forth the more spiritual selfishness. It will not, 
indeed, any longer be the ultimate aim of the parable to teach the mis- 
erable doom which must follow oh the selfish abuse of worldly goods, 
the living merely for this present world ; but yet more strikingly, that 
miserable doom is assumed as so certain and evident, that it may be 
used as the substratum on which to superinduce another moral, through 
which to afford another warning. Whatever might, according to the 
more usual interpretation, have been drawn from it, of earnest warning 
for all the children of this present world, who have faith in nothing be- 
3 r ond it, — for all who are unmindful, in their own abundance, of the infi- 
nite want and woe around them, of the distresses of their fellow-men, 
the same may be drawn from it still. Only, in addition to this warning 
to the world, it will yield another deeper warning to the Church, that it 
do not glorify and exalt itself in the multitude of its own blessings and 
privileges, but that it have a deep and feeling sense of the spiritual 
wants and miseries of all who know not God, and that it seek earnestly 
to remove them. Of this interpretation I will say something more 
presently; it is plainly not incompatible with the commonly received 
interpretation, to which it is now time to return. 

" There ivas a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine, 
linen, and fared sumptuously] every day" — habitually clothed, for so 
much the word implies : it was not on some high day that he thus 
arrayed himself, but this "purple and, fine linen" was his ordinary ap- 



* For a list of the interpreters, who have held one view and the other, see 
Suicer's Thes., s. v, Ad(apos. 

■f Parkhurst is not satisfied with this, "fared sumptuously," which he thinks an 
inadequate rendering of the original (ev<ppaLp6fjt.evos Xa/xirpws). There is something, 
he says, wanting in our version, that should show the exultation and merriment of 
heart in which the rich man lived. He proposes, "who lived in jovial splendor;" 
and Mr. Greswell, "enjoying himself sumptuously." Teelman {Com. in 1/uc. xvi., 
p. 320, seq.) makes the same objection to the Vulgate, "epulabatur lautfc," and 
enters into the matter at length. The old Italic was nearer to their view, for it 
seems to have had (Irjeneus, Con. Hcer., 1. 3, c. 41) jucundabatur nitide. So 
Luther, who translates, " Und lebte herrlich und in Freuden." But the immediate 
mention which follows, of the crumbs falling from the table, makes it most 
probable that some sumptuous feastings, some Eximia veste et victu .convivia, are 
here indicated ; and both \aixirp6s and cvcppalvofiai, if oftener used in the other 
sense, are frequently enough in this. Hesychius interprets evcoxybevra as=a 
ei><ppay&4rra, and we read of Ka/jLirpa iSca-fxara (Sirac. xxix. 26). 



372 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

parel ; so too his sumptuous fare, it was his every day's entertainment 
The extreme costliness of the purple dye of antiquity is well known ;* 
the honor too in which this color was held; it was accounted the 
royal color ; the purple garment was then, as now in the East, a royal 
gift. (Esth. xviii. 15; Dan. v. 7 ; 1 Mace. x. 20; xi. 58; xiv. 43.) 
With it too idols were often clothed. (Jer. x. 9.) There was as much 
then of pride as of luxury in its use. And the byssus, which we have 
rightly translated "Jine linen" was hardly in less price or esteem,! so 
that he plainly sought out for himself all that was costliest and rarest. 
Yet while this was so, it has often been observed, and cannot be ob- 
served too often, that he is not accused of any breach of the law, — not, 
like those rich men in St. James (v. 1-6), of any flagrant crimes. 
" Jesus said not, a calumniator, — he said not, an oppressor of the poor, 
— he said not, a robber of other men's goods 3 nor a receiver of such, nor 
a false accuser, — he said not, a spoiler of orphans, a persecutor of 
widows : nothing of these. But what did he say ? — ' There ivas a cer- 
tain rick man? And what was his crime ? — A lazar lying at his gate, 
and lying unrelieved."^: Nor is he even accused of being, as he is some- 
times called, for instance in the heading of the chapter in our Bibles, — 
" a glutton." To ca'll him such. " a Sir Epicure Mammon," serves only 
to turn the edge of the parable. For, on the contrary, there is nothing 

* That is, the true sea-purple. There were many cheaper substitutes for it : 
thus one, in Lucian's Navigium, c. 22, who is desiring to lay out for himself a life 
like that of Dives, and in imagination heaping on himself every thing of the 
costliest, says, icr^s iirl tovtols aAovpyh [that is, a\bs epyop, the true work of the 
sea], Kai 6 fiios otos aPpbraros. Its rarity arose from the exceeding small quantity, 
but a few drops, of the liquid which served for the dyeing, found in each fish. 
(Plin., H. N., 1. 9, c. 60.) All modern inquirers have failed to discover what shell- 
fish it exactly was which yielded the precious dye. (Winer's Real Worterbtich, 
h. v. Purpur.) 

t Pliny (H. N., 1. 19, c. 4) tells of a kind of byssus which was exchanged for its 
weight in gold : it served, he says, mulierum maxime deliciis. It is not probable, 
as has been sometimes asserted, that we have an ip dia 8vo?v in "purple and fins 
linen," so that indeed it signifies fine linen dyed of a purple hue. Though the 
byssus did sometimes receive this color, yet its glory was rather in its dazzling 
whiteness; thus Rev. xix. 8, 14, "fine linen, white and clean;" and Pliny, H. N., 
1. 19, c. 2, speaking of the fine linen of Upper Egypt, Nee ulla sunt eis candore 
mollitiaque praeferenda ; xestes inde gratissima. The byssus here was the inner 
vest, the purple the outer robe. The two occur together, Rev. xviii. 12, as part of 
the merchandise of Babylon. The blue and white formed a highly prized com- 
bination of colors, Esth. viii. 15. (See the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Byssus 
p. 1G9 ; TViner's Real Worterbuch, s. v. Baumwollc ; and Bahr's Symbolik d. Mos. 
Cult., v. 1, pp. 310, 338; v. 2, p. 72.) 

X Augustine {Serin. 178, c. 3). Massillon has one of his most deeply impressive 
Lent sormons upon this parable, in which he labors especially to bring out this 
point. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 373 

to make us think him other than a reputable man, — one of whom none 
could say worse than that he loved to dwell at ease, that he desired to 
remove far off from himself all things painful to the flesh, to surround 
himself with all things pleasurable. His name Christ has not told us, 
but the poor man's only :* " Seems he not to you," asks Augustine,f 
u to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the 
poor man written, but found not the name of the rich ; for that book is 
the book of life 9" " Jesus," says Cajetan, " of a purpose named the 
beggar, but the rich man he designated merely as ' a certain man? so to 
testify that the spiritual order of things is contrary to the worldly. In 
the world, the names of the rich are known, and when they are talked 
of, they are designated by their names : but the names of the poor are 
either not known, or if known are counted unworthy to be particularly 
noted."J 

At the gate of the rich man, whose name though well known on 
earth, was thus unrecognized in heaven,' the beggar Lazarus was flung 
— brought it may be thither, by the last who took any care or charge of 
him upon earth; and who now released themselves gladly of their 
charge, counting they had done enough when they had cast him under 
the eye, and so upon the pity, of one so easily able to help them. The 
circumstance that Lazarus was laid at the gate, in the vestibule it 
might be, or open porch, of the rich man's palace, which was probably 
henceforth his only home, this circumstance contains an ample reply 
to one.§ who in his eagerness to fasten some charge on Scripture, asserts 

* AdCapos, abridged from 'EAeafrpos, and once called by Tertullian Eleazar. 
There are two derivations given of the name, the one most generally received 
would make it, "Who has God only for - his help ; but Olshausen adheres to the 
other, which would make Aa£apos==dj8o73&?7Tos. (See Suicer's T/ies., s. v. Adfapos.) 
It is a striking evidence of the deep impression which this parable has made on 
the mind of Christendom, that the term, lazar, should have passed into so many 
languages as it has, losing altogether its signification as a proper name. Euthy- 
mius mentions that some called the rich man, Nimeusis ; and they used to show. 
perhaps still pretend to show, the ruins of his house at Jerusalem : thus an old 
traveller : Inde ad quindecim passus procedentibus obviam fiunt aedes (ut volunt) 
divitis illius epulonis, ex quadratis et dolatis constructs lapidibus, magnifico et 
eleganti opere, altis muris licet ruinosis conspicuae. 

t Serm. 41. 

$ So Bengel : Lazarus nomine suo notus in caelo : dives non consetur nomine 
ullo. 

§ Strauss {Lcben Jcsu, v. 1, p. 671), but he has had a forerunner here, for among 
the essays written on this parable, there is one (reprinted in Hase's TVies. Theol.) 
by A. L. Konigsmann, which is entitled, De Dlvite Epulone d. Christo immisericor- 
dice. nun accusato. 1708. But Grotins rightly remarks that Lazarus was cast, in 
ipso divitis aspectu ut ignorantiam caussari nullo modo posset; and see Neander's 
Lebcn Jesu. p. 205, note. He has a poor notion of the Christian law of love, who 
undertakes the defence of Divest 



374 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

that there is no reason sufficient given why the rich man should have 
been punished as he was, — that " his only crime seems to have been 
his wealth." The beggar was cast at his very porch, so that ignorance 
of his distresses and miseries might in no wise be pleaded. And even 
if the rich man did not know, that ignorance itself would have been his 
crime, for it was his task to have made himself acquainted with the 
misery that was round him ; since for what else was the leisure of wealth 
given him ? 

As the rich man's splendid manner of living was painted in a few 
strokes, so in a few as expressive is set forth to us the utter misery and 
destitution of Lazarus. Like Job, he was " full of sores" — hungry, and 
no man gave to him, — for since it is evidently our Lord's purpose to de- 
scribe the extreme of earthly destitution, it seems most probably meant 
that he desired, but in vain, " to be fed with the crumbs which fell from 
the rich man's table ;" (Judg. i. 7) — even these were not thrown to him, 
at least not in such a measure that he could be satisfied with them.* 
Shut out from human fellowship and human pity, he found sympathy 
only from the dumb animals j " the dogs came and licked his sores" — 
probably the animals without a master that wander through the streets 
of an Eastern city. (P.s. lix. 15, 16.) Chrysostom indeed, and others 
after him, have seen in this circumstance an evidence of the extreme 
weakness and helplessness to which disease and want had reduced him ; 
he lay like one dead, and without strength even to fray away the dogs, 
which approached to lick his sores, and thus to aggravate his misery by 
exasperating their pain. Yet this is hardly what is meant : for medici- 
nal virtue was in ancient times popularly attributed to the tongue of the 
dog ;f being moist and smooth, it would certainly not exasperate, but 
rather assuage the pain of a wound. The circumstance seems rather 
mentioned to enhance the cruelty and neglect of the rich man, and to 
set them in the strongest light ) — man neglected his fellow-man, beheld 
his sufferings with a careless eye and an unmoved heart, yet was it a 
misery which even the beasts had pity on, so that what little they could 
they did to alleviate his sufferings. We have in fact in the two descrip- 
tions stroke for stroke. Dives is covered with purple and fine linen ; 
Lazarus is covered only with sores. The one fares sumptuously, the 
other desires to be fed with crumbs. The one, although this is left to 
our imagination to fill up, has numerous attendants to wait on his least 
caprice, the other only dogs to tend his sores. 

* The words however which are found in the Yulgate, Et nemo illi dabat, do 
not belong here, and are evidently transferred from ch. xv. 16. 

f H. de Sto. Victore Lingua canis dum lingit vulnus, curat. (See also "Winer, 
Ileal Wdrterbuch, s. v. Speichel.) "When Hilary too (Tract, in Ps. cxxii.) sets him 
In aggestu fimi, this also is a needless exaggeration of his own. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 375 

There is nothing expressly said concerning the moral condition of 
Lazarus — his faith, his patience, his resignation to the will of God. Yet 
these from the sequel must all be assumed, since his poverty of itself 
would never have brought him to Abraham's bosom. We may certainly 
assume that he suffered after a godly sort, that he did not " call the 
proud happy," nor say that he had cleansed his heart in vain, but pa- 
tiently abided, putting his trust in the Lord. But for this, his suffer- 
ings themselves, however great, would have profited him nothing, would 
have brought him not a whit nearer the kingdom of God. In all homi- 
letic use of the parable, this should never be left out of sight. Thus 
Augustine has more than one admirable discourse, in which, having 
brought home to the rich and great, to the prosperous children of the 
world, the awful warning which is here for them, he tun s round to the 
poor, and exhorts them that they be not deceived, as though mere out- 
ward poverty were of itself sufficient to bring them into a conformit} r 
with Lazarus, and into the possession of the good things which he in- 
herited. He tells them that poverty of spirit must go along with that 
external poverty, which last is to be looked at, not as itself constituting 
humility, but only as a great help to it — even as wealth is to be regarded 
not as of necessity excluding humility, but only as a great hindrance to 
it, a great temptation, lest they that have it be high-minded, and come 
to trust in those uncertain riches, rather than in the living God : and he 
often bids them note, how the very Abraham into whose bosom Lazarus 
was carried, was one who had been on earth rich in flocks, and in herds, 
and in all possessions.* 

But this worldly glory and this worldly misery are alike to have an 

* Thus, Scrm. 14, c. 2 : Ait mihi quisque mendicus debilitate fessus, pannis 
obsitus, fame languidus, Mihi debetur regnum caelorum, ego enim similis sum illi 
Lazaro: Nostrum genus est cui debetur regnum caBlorum, non illi generi qui 
induuntur purpura et bysso, et epulantur quotidie splendide. Augustine replies : 
Cum ilium sanctum ulcerosum te esse dicis, timeo ne superbiendo non sis quod 
dicis. Esto verus pauper, esto pius, esto humilis. Nam si de ipsa pannosa et 
ulcerosa paupertate gloriaris, quia talis fuit ille qui ante domum divitis inops jace- 
bat, attehdis quia pauper fuit et aliud non attendis. — (Enarr. in Ps. lxxxv. 1) : 
Nunquid vere ille pauper merito illius inopiae ablatus est ab angelis, dives autem 
ille peccato divitiarum suarum ad tormenta missus est 1 In illo paupere humilitas 
intelligitur honorificata, in illo divite superbia damnata. Breviter probo, quia non 
divitiae, sed superbia in illo divite cruciabatur. Certe ille pauper in sinum Abrahae 
sublatus est. De ipso Abraham dicit Scriptura, quia habebat hie plurimum auri 
et argenti, et dives fuit in terra. Si qui dives est ad tormenta rapitur, quomodo 
Abraham prseccsserat pauperem, ut ablatum in sinum suum susciperet 1 Sed erat 
Abraham in divitiis pauper humilis, tremens omnia praecepta et obaudiens. Cf 
Enarr. in Ps. exxxi. 15, and in Ps. li. 9: Quid tibi prodest, si eges facultate, et 
ardes cupiditate 1 This last passage is worth referring to, for the profound insight 
which it gives into the full meaning of Matt. xix. 23-26. 



376 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

end : they are the passing shows of things, not the abiding realities. u It 
came to pass that the beggar died ;" — he died, and how mighty the 
change ! he whom but a moment before no man served, whom none but 
the dogs cared for, is tended of angels, is carried by them into the bless- 
edness prepared for him,* " into Abraham's bosom." This last phrase 
has been sometimes explained as though he was brought into the chiefest 
place of honor and felicity, such as the sons of Zebodee asked for them- 
selves (Matt. xx. 23), that he was admitted not merely to sit down with 
Abraham in the kingdom of heaven, at the heavenly festival, whereunto 
all the faithful should be admitted, but to lean on his bosom, an honor 
of which one only could partake, as John the beloved disciple leaned 
upon Jesus' bosom at the paschal supper. But this explanation starts 
altogether upon a wrong assumption, since the image underlying " Abra- 
ham 1 s bosom" is not that of a feast at all. Hades is not the place of the 
great festival of the kingdom, which is reserved for the actual setting 
up of that kingdom, and to which there is allusion Matt. viii. 1 1 ; Luke 
xiii. 29, 30. This is not a parallel passage with those, but rather is to 
find its explanation from John i. 18, where the only-begotton Son is de- 
clared to be in the bosom of the Father : it is a figurative phrase to ex- 
press the deep quietness of an innermost communion.f Besides, the 
Jews, from whom the phrase is borrowed, spoke of all true believers as 
going to Abraham, as being received into his bosom. To be in Abra 
ham's bosom was equivalent with them to the being " in the garden ot 
Eden," or " under the throne of glory," the being gathered into the gen- 
eral receptacle of happy but waiting souls. £ (See Wisd. iii. 1-3.) The 
expression already existing among them received here the sanction and 

* Luther : En qui dum vivebat, ne unum quidem hominem habuit aniicum, re- 
pente non unius angeli, sed plurium ministerio honoratur. The belief was current 
among the Jews that the souls of the righteous were carried by angels into 
paradise : there are frequent allusions to this in the apocryphal gospels. (See 
Thilo's Cod. Apocryphus, v. 1, pp. 25, 45, 777.) In the heathen mythology the 
task was assigned to Mercury, TropircZos, tyvxoTrSfjuros, tyvxayvyos- So Horace : Tu 
pias l» f is animas reponis Sedibus. 

t Lud. Capellus (Spicilegium, p. 56) : Porro sinus Abrahee non tam videtur hie 
dictus a more accumbentium mensae (uti vulgo accipitur hsec phrasis) qua.m potius 
k puerulis qui parentibus sunt carissimi, quos parentes in sinu sive gremio fovent, 
in quo etiam suaviter interdum quiescunt. And Gerhard {hoc. Tkeull., loc. 27, c. 
8, § 3) : Vocatur sinus metaphora ducta a parentibus, qui puerulos suos diurnfc 
discursitatione fessos, vel ex peregrinatione domum reversos, aut ex adverso aliquo 
casu ejulantes, solatii causa in sinum suum recipiunt, ut ibi suaviter quicscant. 
Theophylact assumes the image to be rather that of a harbor, where the faithful 
cast anchor and are in quiet after the storms and tribulations of life. This escapes 
us in the English, but might be suggested equally by the Latin sinus as the Greek 

K6K7TOS. 

$ See Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. t in loc. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 377 

seal of Christ, and has come thus to be accepted by the Church,* 
which has understood by it in like manner the state of painless expec- 
tation, of blissful repose, which should intervene between the death of 
the faithful in Christ Jesus, and their perfect consummation and bliss 
at his coming in his glorious kingdom. It is the " Paradise" of Luke 
xxiii. 43, the place of the souls under the altar (Rev. vi. 9) ; it is, as 
some distinguish it. blessedness, but not glory.f Hither, to this haven 
of rest and consolation, Lazarus, after all his troubles, was safely borne.J 
But " the rich man also died and ivas buried" — it would appear sub- 
sequently to Lazarus, so that, as has been noted, the mercy of God was 
manifest in the order of their deaths : Lazarus was more early exempted 
from the miseries of his earthly lot ; Dives was allowed a longer time 
and space for repentance. But at last his day of grace came to an end : 
it is possible that the putting of Lazarus under his eye had been his 
final trial; his neglect of him the last drop that made the cup of God's 
long-suffering to run over. Entertaining him, he might have unawares 
entertained angels. He had let slip, however, this latest opportunity, 
and on the death of Lazarus follows hard, as would seem, his own. He 
tt also died and was buried." There is a sublime irony, a stain upon 
all earthly glory, in this mention of his burial, connected as it is with 
what is immediately to follow. No doubt we are meant to infer that he 
had a splendid funeral, all things according to the most approved pomp 
of the world :§ this splendid carrying to the grave is for him what the 
carrying into Abraham's bosom was for Lazarus, — it is his equivalent, 
which, however, profits him but little where now he is.|j 

* For ample quotations from the Greek Fathers, see Suicer's Thes., s. v. 
rtoA-rros. Augustine {Ep. 187) is worth referring to, and Tertullian {De Anima, c. 
58). Aquinas {Sum. Thcol, pars 3 a , qu. 52, art. 2) gives the view of the middle 
ages ; Cajetan, of the modern Romish Church, which, for good reasons of its own, 
has always depressed as much as possible the felicity of that middle state : In 
limbo patrum erat consolatio, turn securitatis aeternge beatitudinis, turn sanctse 
societatis. turn exemptionis ab omni poena sensus. Limborch {Theol. Christ., 1. 6, 
c. 10, § 8) has a striking passage, in which, starting from the Scriptural phrase of 
death as a sleep, he compares the intermediate state of the good to a sweet and 
joyftu dream, while the wicked are as men afflicted with horrible and frightful 
dreams, each being to waken on the reality of the things of which he has been 
dreaming ; in this agreeing with Tertullian, who calls that state a prgelibatio 
sentential. 

t Beatitudo, but not gloria. 

X Augustine {Scrm. 41) : Sarcina Christi, pennse sunt. His pennis ille paupe* 
In sinum Abrahaj volavit. 

ty Seculariter fucata : Augustine. 

|| See for a noble passage on the rich man's burial Augustine {Enarr. in Ps, 
xlviii. 18) : Spiritus torquetur apud inferos, quid illi prodest quia corpus jacet in 
cinnamis et aromatibus involutum pretiosis linteis 1 Tanquam si dominus domfts 



378 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

For his death is for him an awakening from his flattering dream of 
ease and pleasure and delight upon the stern and terrible realities of 
the life to come. He has sought to save his life, and has lost it. The 
play in which he acted the rich man is ended, and as he went off the 
stage, he was stripped hare of all the trappings with which he had been 
furnished, that he might sustain his part : all that remains is the fact 
that he has played it badly, and so will have no praise, but rather ex- 
tremest blame, from him who allotted him the character to sustain.* 



mittatur in exilium, et tu ornes parietes ipsius. Hie in exilio eget, et fame deficit, 
vix sibi unam cellam invenit ubi somnum capiat, et tu dicis, Felix est, nam ornata 
est domus illius. The whole exposition of the Psalm is full of interesting matter 
in regard of this parable. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. xxxiii. 22. — According to Jewish 
notions, it was this very burial which handed him over to his torments, for in tho 
book Sohar it is said : Anima quae non est justa in hoc mundo permanet, donee 
corpus sepultum est, quo facto ipsa deducitur in gehennam. 

* Both these images, that of awaking from a dream of delight, and bringing to 
an end some proud part in a play, are used by Chrysostom to set forth the altered 
condition of the rich man after his death. Ad Theod. Laps., 1. 1, c. 8: "For as 
they who toil in the mines, or undergo some other penalty more terrible even than 
this, when perchance they fall to sleep under their many labors and their most 
bitter existence, and in dreams behold themselves lapped in delights and in all rich 
abundance, yet after they are awakened owe no thanks to their dreams ; so also 
that rich man, as in a dream being wealthy for this present life, after his migration 
hence was punished with that bitter punishment." And again (De Laz., Cone. 
11) : " For as on the stage some enter, assuming the masks of kings and captains, 
physicians and orators, philosophers and soldiers, being in truth nothing of the 
kind, so also in the present life, wealth and poverty are only masks. As then, 
when thou sittest in the theatre, and beholdest one playing below, who sustains 
the part of a king, thou dost not count him happy, nor esteemest him a king, nor 
desirest to be such as he ; but knowing him to be one of the common people, a 
ropemaker or a blacksmith, or some such a one as this, thou dost not esteem him 
happy for his mask and his robe's sake, nor judgest of his condition from these, but 
holdest him cheap for the meanness of his true condition : so also, here sitting in 
the world as in a theatre, and beholding men playing as on a stage, when thou seest 
many rich, count them not to be truly rich, but to be wearing the masks of rich. 
For as he, who on the stage plays the king or captain, is often a slave, or one who 
sells figs or grapes in the market, so also this rich man is often in reality poorest of 
all. For if thou strip him of his mask, and unfold his conscience, and scrutinize 
his inward parts, thou wilt there find a great penury of virtue, thou wilt find him 
to be indeed the most abject of men. And as in the theatre, when evening is come 
and the spectators are departed, and the players are gone forth thence, having laid 
aside their masks and their dresses, then they who before showed as kings and 
captains to all, appear now as they truly are ; so now, when death approaches and 
the audience is dismissed, all laying aside the masks of wealth and of poverty 
depart from hence, and being judged only by their works, appear some indeed 
truly rich, but some poor ; and some glorious, but others without honor." Cf. 
Augustine, Serm. 345. Arndt (De Vero Christ., 1. 1, c. 20) has a fine comparison to 
let forth the same truth. Of such as the rich man in our parable, he says : Quoa 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 379 

From this verse the scene of the parable passes beyond the range of 
our experience into the unknown world of spirits, but not beyond the 
range of his eye to whom both worlds, that and this, are alike open and 
manifest. He appears as much at home there as here ; he moves in 
that world as with a perfect familiarity, speaking without astonishment, 
as of things which he knows. He still indeed continues to use the lan- 
guage of men, as the only language by which he could make himself 
intelligible to men. Yet is it not easy now to separate between what is 
merely figure, vehicle for truth, and what is to be held fast as itself 
essential truth.* We may safely say that the form in which the ex- 
pression of pain, and of desire' after alleviation, embodies itself, is figu- 
rative, even as the dialogue between Abraham and Dives belongs in the 
same way to the parabolical clothing of the truth. It is indeed the hope 
and longing after deliverance which alternately rises, and is again 
crushed by the voice of the condemning law speaking in and through 
the conscience : — as by the seeing of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, is 
conveyed to us the truth, that the misery of the wicked will be aggra- 
vated by the comparison which they will continually be making of their 
lost estate with the blessedness of the faithful. 

But to return ; he that had that gorgeous funeral, is now " in hell" 
or ' : in Hades" rather ; for as u Abraham's bosom" is not heaven, though 
it will issue in heaven, so neither is Hades " hell" though to issue in it, 
when death and Hades shall be cast into the lake of fire, which is the 
proper hell. (Rev. xx. 14.) It is the place of painful restraint,! where 
the souls of the wicked are reserved to the judgment of the great day : 

homines fortasse non male camelis et mulis comparaveris ; nam ut illi per rapes 
montiumque edita vestes sericas, gemmas, aromata, et generosa vina dorso vehen- 
tes, agmen quasi quoddam famulorum custodiae et securitatis causa secum trahunt , 
simulac vero circa vesperam in stabulum venerint, pretiosorum ornamentorum ves- 
tiumque pictarum apparatus illis detrahitur, jamque lassi et omni comitatu nudati 
nil nisi vibices et livida plagarum vestigia ostentant : Ita qui in hoc mundo auro et 
serico nituerunt, obitfrs extrema vespera irruente, nihil habent praeter vibices et 
cicatrices peccatorum per abusum divitiarum sibi impressas. Shakspeare has the 
same thought : 

" If thou art rich, thou art poor, 

For like an ass whose back with ingots bows, 

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, 

And death urJcads thee." 

* There were some in Augustine's time that took all this to the letter, but he 
has more doubts and misgivings (De Gen. ad Lit., 1. 8, c. 6) : Sed quomodo in- 
telligenda sit ilia flamma inferni, ille sinus Abrahae, ilia lingua divitis, ille digitus 
pauperis, ilia sitis tormenti, ilia stilla refrigerii, vix fortasse a mansuete, quaBrenti- 
bus, h contentiose autem cer^antibus nunquam, invenitur. Tertullian {De Anima, 
c. 7) has of course taken it all literally. 

t *v\aK7) (1 Pet. iii. 18) = &0v<x(ros (Luke viii. 31). 



380 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

it is <c the deep" whither the devils prayed that they might net be sent 
to be tormented before their time (Luke viii. 31), — for as that other 
blessed place has a foretaste of heaven, so has this place a foretaste of 
hell ; Dives being there is " in torments," stripped of all wherein his 
soul delighted and found its satisfaction ; his purple robe has become a 
garment of fire;* as he himself describes it, he is " tormented in this 
flame?' 

For a while we may believe that he found it impossible to realize his 
present position, to connect his present self with his past ; all for a while 
may have seemed to him only as some fearful dream. But when at 
length he had convinced himself that it was not indeed this dream, but 
an awaking, and would take the measure of his actual condition, then, 
and that he might so do, " he lifted up his eyes, and seeth Abraham afar 
off, and Lazarus in his bosom." (Isai. lxv. 13, 14.) '-''And he cried and 
said, FatJier Abraham," still clinging to the hope that his descent 
from Abraham, his fleshly privileges, will profit him something : he 
would plead that he has Abraham to his father, though it was indeed 
this which made his sin so great, his fall so deep. This, which was 
once his glory, is now the very stress of his guilt. That he, a son of 
Abraham, the man of that liberal hand and princely heart, the man in 
whom, as the head of their great family, every Jew was reminded of his 
kinship with every other, of the one blood in their veins, of the one hope 
in Grod which ennobled them all from the least to the greatest, — should 
have so sinned against the mighty privileges of his condition, should 
have so denied through his life, all which the name " son of Abraham" 
was meant to teach him, it was this which had brought him to that place 
of torment. Nor does Abraham deny the relationship, for he addresses 
him not as a stranger but a son, yet thus, in the very allowance of the 
relationship, coupled with the refusal of the request, rings the knell of 
his latest hope. Poor and infinitely slight was the best alleviation which 
he had looked for, — a drop of water on his fiery tongue ! So shrunken 
are his desires, so low is the highest hope which even he himself ven- 
tures to entertain. f Nothing could have marked so strongly how far 
he has fallen, how conscious he has himself become of the depth of his 
fall. 

In this prayer of the rich man we have the only invocation of saints 
in Scripture, and certainly not a very encouraging one. He can speak 
of " father Abraham" and his "father's house," but there is another 
Father, of whom he will know nothing — the Father whom the Prodigal 

* Augustine (Stem. 36, c. G): Successit ignis purpura et bysso: eft. tuniiA 
•rdebat, qua, se exspoliare non poterat. 

f Augustine : Superbus temporis, mendicus inferni. 



THE EICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 381 

had found. For he is as far as heaven is from hell, from the faith of 
the prophet: u Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be igno- 
rant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not." And the pity which he 
refused to show, he fails to obtain. We have here the reverse of the 
beatitude, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." 
With what measure he meted, it is measured to him again. The crumbs 
which he denied, issue in the drop of water which is denied to him.* 
Here is one who has not obeyed the admonition of the preceding para- 
ble, who has not made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, and 
now that he has failed, has none to receive him into everlasting habita- 
tions. That Abraham's reply contains a refusal A of his petition is clear ; 
yet it is not so certain what exact meaning we shall attribute to his 
words : " Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things? 1 There are 
two explanations ; — the first and the commonest one would make u thy 
good things" to signify, temporal felicities : these, which were goods to 
thee, which thou esteemedst the best and highest goods, and wouldst 
know of no other, thou receivedst ; and Abraham's reply would then be 
this : " Son, thou hadst thy choice, the things eternal or the things tem- 
poral, this life or that ; thou didst choose that : but now, when that is 
run through, it is idle to think of altering thy choice, and having even 
the slightest portion in this life also." But the other explanation that 
would make "thy good things" to be good actions or good qualities, 
which in some small measure Dives possessed, and for which he received 
in this life his reward, I cannot give better than in the words of Bishop 
Sanderson.f The answer of Abraham was as though he had said, " If 
thou hadst any thing good in thee, remember thou hast had thy re- 
ward in earth already, and now there remaineth for thee nothing but the 
full punishment of thine ungodliness there in hell: but as for Lazarus 
he hath had the chastisement of his infirmities [his i evil things'] on 
earth already, and now remaineth for him nothing but the full reward 
of his godliness here in heaven." Presently before he has said, "For as 
God rewardeth those few go?d things that are in evil men with these 
temporal benefits, for whom yet in his justice he reserveth eternal dam- 
nation, as the due wages, by that justice, of their graceless impenitency, 
S3 he punisheth those remnants of sin that are in godly men with these 
temporal afflictions, for whom yet in his mercy he reserveth eternal sal- 
vation, as the due wages, yet by that mercy only, of their faith and re- 
pentance and holy obedience." This was Chrysostom's view of the pas- 



* Augustiuo: Desideravit guttam. qui non dedit micam; a thought which 
makes Gregory the Great exclaim {Horn. 40 in Evang.) : Oh quanta est subtilitas 
judiciorum Dei ! And Bengel observes, Lingna maxime peccarat. 

f In a sermon on Ahab's repentance (1 Kin. xxi. 29). 



382 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

sage,* and Gregory the Great, who in general follows Augustine,f haa 
here an independent exposition, and strongly maintains this meaning of 
the words.J which has certainly something to commend it. 

But whether there be in the words such a meaning or not. this is in 
them, as in so many other passages of Scripture, namely, that the re- 
ceiving of this world's good without any portion of its evil, the course of 
an unbroken prosperity, is ever a sign and augury of ultimate reproba- 
tion. § (Ps. xvii. 4; Luke vi. 24, 25.) Nor is the reason of this hard to 
perceive ; for there being in every man a large admixture of that dross 
which has need to be purged out, and which can only be purged out by 
the fire of pain and affliction, he who is not cast into this fire is left 
with all his dross in him, with his evil unpurged, and therefore can be 
no partaker of that holiness without which no man shall see God. 
Thus Dives, to his endless loss, had in this life received good things 
without any share of evil. || But now all is changed : Lazarus, who re- 
ceived in this mortal life evil things, is comforted, but Dives is torment- 
ed ; for he had sown only to the flesh, and therefore, when the order of 
things has commenced in which the flesh has no part, he can only reap 
in misery and emptiness, in the hungry longing and unsatisfied desire of 
the soul. 

Moreover, besides that law of retaliation, which requires that the 
unmerciful should not receive mercy, the fact is brought home to the 



* De Laz., Cone. 3. He lays a stress on the a-n-eAajSe?, recepisti, not cccepisti ; 
see too Theophylact (in loc.) Certainly the other five passages of St. Luke, in 
which hiroXanfi&veiv occurs (vi. 34, twice; xv. 27; xviii. 30; xxiii. 41), quite bear 
him out in his remark. 

f Augustine's exclamation here, mundi bona, apud inferos mala ! shows that 
the explanation was his. 

% Horn. 40 in Evang. : Dum dicitur, Recepisti bona in vita tua, indicatur et 
Dives iste boni aliquid habuisse, ex quo in hac vita bona reciperet. Rursumque, 
dum de Lazaro dicitur, quia recepit mala, profecto monstratur et Lazarus habuisse 
malum aliquod, quod purgaretur. Sed ilium paupertas afflixit et tersit, istum 
abundantia remuneravit et repulit. Cf. Moral., 1. 5, c. 1. In like manner the 
Jewish doctors said : Quemadmodum in seculo futuro piis rependitur praemium 
boni operis etiam levissimi, quod perpetrarunt, ita in seculo hoc rependitur impiis 
prsemium cujuscunque levissimi boni oporis,— a saying which Gfrorer (Urchristen- 
iAum, v. 2, p. 171) applies here. 

§ Augustine : Quid infellcius felicitate peccantium 1 

|| Thus in the Jewish books the scholar of an eminent Rabbi found his master 
one day in extreme affliction and pain, and began to laugh, while all the other 
scholars were weeping round him. Being upbraided for this, he answered, that 
while he saw in times past his master in such uninterrupted prosperity, ho had 
often feared lest he was receiving his portion in this world ; but now seeing him 
so afflicted, he took courage again, and believed that his good things were still to 
come. (Meuschen's N. T. cx Talm., Must., p. 66.) 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 3S3 

conscience of him who was once tne rich man, that with death the sepa- 
ration of the elements of good and evil, elements which in this world are 
mingled and in confusion, begins. Like is gathered to like, good by na- 
tural affinity to good, and evil to evil — and this separation is permanent. 
"Beticeen ^s and you there is a great gulf fixed" not a mere handbreadth 
only, as the Jews fabled, but " a great gulf" and not merely there, but 
"fixed"* there, — an eternal separation, a yawning chasm, too deep to 
be filled up, too wide to be bridged over, so that there is no passing from 
one side to the other ; " They who would pass from lience to you cannot, 
neither can, they pass to us that would come from thence?'' Now, the lat- 
ter affirmation is easily intelligible, for we can quite understand the lost 
desiring to pass out of their state of pain to the place of rest and blessed- 
ness, but it is not quite so easy to understand the reverse — " they wlw 
woidd ptass from hence to you cannot ." The desire of passing thither 
cannot, of course, be for the purpose of changing their condition ; but 
they cannot pass, he would say, even for a season, they have no power 
to yield even a moment's solace to any that are in that place, however 
they may desire it. Yet here the difficulty suggests itself, Can they, 
being full of love, otherwise than greatly desire it' 1 ? Nay, is not such a 
longing implied in the very words of Abraham % And if they do thus 
greatly desire it, and yet it may not be, must not this trouble and cast a 
shade even upon a heavenly felicity % A question which must wait for 
its solution ; for all the answers which commonly are given do not 
reach it. 

But though repulsed for himself, he has yet a request to urge for 
others. If Abraham cannot send Lazarus to that world of woe, at least 
"he can cause him to return to the earth which he has so lately quitted ; 
there is no such gulf intervening there : — c; I pray thee, therefore, fatlier, 
that thou tvouldst send him to my fathers house, for I have five brethren, 
that lie may testify unto them, lest tliey also come u?ito this place of tor- 
ment." He and they, Sadducees at heart, though it might be Pharisees 
in name, perhaps oftentimes had mocked together, at that unseen world 
which now he was finding so fearful a reality ;f and that it was such, he 
would now desire by Lazarus to warn them. Lazarus will be able to 
u testify," to speak, that is, of things which he has seen. J In this anxiety 

* Augustine {Ad Evod., Ep. 164) : Hiatus . . . non solera est, varum eiaam 
firmatus est. 

f Augustine {Serm. 41) : Non dubito quia cum ipsis fratribus suis loquens de 
Prophetis monentibus bona, probibentibus mala, terrentibus de tormentis futuris 
et futura prsemia promittentibus, irridebat baec omnia, dicens cum ft-atribus suis. 
Quae vita post mortem 1 quae memoria putredinis 1 qui sensus cineris 1 . . . quia 
inde reversus auditus est 1 

t In the legend of Er the Pamphylian (Plato's Rep., 1. 10, c. 13), be is to 



384 THE RICH MAN AXD LAZARUS. 

for his brethren's good, which he, who hitherto had been merely selfish, 
expresses, some have found the evidence of a better mind beginning, and 
the proof that suffering was already doing its work in him, was awaken- 
ing in him the slumbering germ of good.* With this view, were it the 
right one, would of necessity be connected his own ultimate restoration, 
and the whole doctrine of future suffering not being vindictive and eter- 
nal, but corrective and temporary : a doctrine which will always find 
favor with all those who have no deep insight into the evil of sin, no 
earnest view of the task and responsibilities of life ; especially when, as 
too often, they are bribed to hold it by a personal interest, by a lurking 
consciousness that they themselves are not earnestly striving to enter at 
the strait gate, that their own standing in Christ is insecure or none. 
But the rich man's request grows out of another root. There lies in it 
a secret justifying of himself, and accusing of God. What a bitter re- 
proach against God and against the old economy is here involved : " If 
only I had been sufficiently warned, if only God had given me sufficient- 
ly clear evidence of these things, of the need of repentance, of this place 
as the goal of a sensual worldly life, I had never come hither. But 
though I was not duly warned, let at least my brethren be so." 

Abraham's answer is brief and almost stern ; rebuking, as was fit, 
this evil thought of his heart : u They are warned ; they have enough to 
keep them from your place of torment, if only they will use it. They 
have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'' 1 Our Lord then clear- 
ly did not see an entire keeping back of the doctrine of life eternal and 
an after retribution in the Pentateuch, but to hear Moses was to hear of 
these things ; as elsewhere more at length he showed. (Matt. xxii. 31, 
32.) Bat the suppliant will not so easily be put to silence. u Nay, fa- 
titer Abraham, but if one icent unto them from the dead they will repent? 1 
As it is true of the faithful that their works do follow them, and that their 
temper here is their temper in heaven, so not less does this man's con- 
tempt of God's word, which he showed on earth, following him beyond 
the grave :f that Word cannot suffice to save men ; they must have 
something else to lead them to repentance. We have here re-appearing 
in hell that u Show us a sign that we may believe," which was so often 

return from the place where souls are judged, &yye\ov avfrpw-jrois yevea&ai ruv iice?, 
of the greatness of the rewards of the just, the dreadfulness of the doom of sin- 
ners. 

* Aquinas (Sum. Thcol., Sitpp. ad 3 m part, qu. 98, art. 4) has a discussion to 
»vhich this verse gives occasion: Utrum damnati in inferno vellent alios esse 
damnatos, qui non sunt damnati 1 He determines, despite this passage, that they 
would. 

t Bengel: Vilipendium Scripturae miser, relictu luxu, secum intulit in itt- 
ferno. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 385 

on the lips of the Pharisees on earth. They believe, or at least think 
they would believe, signs and portents, but will not believe God's Word. 
(Isai. viii. 19, 20.) A vain expectation ! for in the words of Abraham, 
" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither mill they be persuaded, 
though one rose from the dead" These words demand to be accurately 
considered. Dives had said, " t/iey will repent ;" Abraham replies, they 
will not even " be persuaded" Dives had said, "if one ivent unto tJiem 
front the dead ,-" Abraham, with a prophetic glance at the world's unbe- 
lief in far greater matter, makes answer, " No, not if one rose from tlie 
dead." He in fact is saying to him, " A far greater act than you de- 
mand would be ineffectual for producing a far slighter effect : you sup- 
pose that wicked men would repent on the return of a spirit ; I tell you 
they would not even be persuaded by the rising of one from the dead."* 
This reply of Abraham's is most weighty, for the insight it gives us 
into the nature of faith, that it is a moral act, an act of the will and the 
affections no less than of the understanding, something therefore which 
cannot be forced by signs and miracles : for where there is a determined 
alienation of the will and affections from the truth, no impression which 
these miracles will make, even if they be allowed to be genuine, will be 
more than transitory. Nor will there fail always to be a loophole some- 
where or other, by which unbelief can escape ;f and this is well, or wt 
should have in the Church the faith of devils, who believe and tremble. 
When the historical Lazarus was raised from the dead, the Pharisees 
were not by this miracle persuaded of the divine mission and authority 
of Christ, and yet they did not deny the reality of the miracle itself. 
(John xi. 47; xii. 10.) A greater too than Lazarus has returned from 
the world of spirits ; nay has arisen from the dead ; and yet what mul 
titudes who acknowledge the fact, and acknowledge it as setting a seal 
to all his claims to be heard and obeyed, yet are not brought by this 
acknowledgment at all nearer to repentance and the obedience of faith. 
And it is very observable, how exactly in the spirit of Abraham's refu- 
sal to send Lazarus, the Lord himself acted after his resurrection. He 
showed himself, not to the Pharisees, not to his enemies, " not to all the 
people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God" (Acts x. 41), to his 

* It is a pity that we have not given the idu tis of ver. 31, "if one," as wo 
have rightly done in the verse preceding. Observe the change of words : iropev&p 
in the request of Dives ; avaari) in the reply of Abraham ; air6 venouv in the re- 
quest ; e/c veKpwv in the reply. 

f "When for instance Spinoza declared himself ready to renounce his system 
and to become a Christian, if only he were convinced of the truth of the raising 
of the historical Lazarus, he knew very well that in his sense of the word convince, 
and with the kind of evidence that he would have required, it was impossible to 
satisfy his demand. (See Bayle Diction., Art. Spinoze, note r.) 
25 



386 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

own disciples alone. It was a judgment on the others, that no sign 
should he given them hut the sign of the prophet Jonah, yet it was a 
mercy also, for they would not have been persuaded, even by one that 
had risen from the dead. At the same time it is not to be denied that 
in Christ's resurrection there was a satisfaction of the longing of man's 
heart, that one should return from the world beyond the grave, and give 
assurance of the reality of that world, — a longing which Abraham could 
not satisfy, but which Christ did, when he died and rose again, and ap* 
peared unto men, having the keys of death and of Hades.* 

It remains only to give a slight sketch of their interpretation, who 
maintain that, besides its literal meaning, the parable his also an alle- 
gorical ; — though of these some find this only by the way, and as some- 
thing merely subordinate, an interpretation which they throw out and 
leave to every one to allow it what value he chooses : while others make 
it the chief moral of the parable, and affirm that it was the primary pur- 
pose of the Lord to set forth the relations between Jew and Gentile. 
Dives then, as already has been said, represents the Jewish nation clad 
in the purple of the king, and the fine linen of the priestf — the kingdom 
of priests or royal priesthood. J They fared sumptuously every day, they 
were amply furnished with all spiritual blessings : " enriched," as The- 
ophylact describes it, " with all knowledge and wisdom, and with the 
precious oracles of G-od." They were the vineyard which the Lord had 



* Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. cxlvii. 14) : O Domine, gratias misericordise tuae ; 
voluisti mori, ut aliquis ab inferis surgeret, et ipse aliquis non quicumque, sed 
Veritas surrexit ab inferis. In Plato's legend of the revenant, alluded to already 
(p. 383, note), there is a remarkable witness for this craving in the mind of man, 
that he who gives assurance of the reality of the things after death should have 
.himself returned from the world of spirits, — a longing that for us has found its 
satisfaction in the resurrection of Christ. The same reappears in that, which how- 
ever is plainly but an imitation of Plato's narrative, the story of Thespesius in 
'Plutarch's essay, De sera Numinis vindicta. 

t Augustine (Qucest. Evang, 1. 3, qu. 38) : In Divite intelligantur superbi Ju- 
daeorum, ignorantes Dei justitiam, et suam volentes constituere . . . Epulatio splen- 
dida, jactantia legis est, in qua gloriabantur plus ad pompam relationis abutentes 
ea, quani ad necessitatem salutis utentes. Compare Gregory the Great {Horn. 40 
in Evang. : and Moral, 1. 25, c. 13) and H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in Luc.) : 
Dives iste Judaicum populum designat, qui cultum vitae exterius habuit, et ac- 
ceptae legis deliciis usus est ad nitorem, non ad utilitatem. Theophylact ; Tloptyv- 
pav kclI Pvacrov eVeSe'SuTo, fiaa-iXelav ix <av Ka ^ i^p^arvvrjv. He refers the faring sumptu- 
ously every day to the daily sacrifice. In modern times Lomcier has wrought out 
this view at length, Obss. Analytico-Didact. ad Luc. xvi., p. 91, seq. See Von 
Meyer's Blatter fur hdhere Wahrrit, v. 6, p. 88, for an exposition not historically 
the sarno, but agreeing with the spirit of this one. It is in this sense also that 
Bwedenborg understands the parable. 

t Bacri\eiov UodTevfj.a, Exod. xix. 6 ; compare 1 Pet. ii. 9. 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 387 

planted, and of which he could say, " What could have been done more 
to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" (Isai. v. 2, 4.) They were 
the people whom he had made to ride on the high places of the earth, 
and to whom pertained " the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, 
and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." 
But all these things were given them, not that they might make their 
boast of them, and rest there, comparing themselves for self-exaltation 
with the heathen round them, who were perishing without the know- 
ledge of God, but that they might spread around them the true faith and 
knowledge of God. Yet they did not so ; " Behold," said St. Paul, " thou 
art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, 
and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, 
being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a 
guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness." But meanwhile, 
though they thus boasted, they did nothing effectual to scatter the dark- 
ness of the heathen ; for they had forsaken their true position, misunder- 
stood their true glory ; and this talent of talents, the knowledge of the 
true God, these privileges, and this election, they had turned into a self- 
ish thing. For they counted that God had blessed them alone of all 
people, instead of, as was the truth, above all people ; they stopped the 
blessing, of which they should have been the channel, and through them 
the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles — he was presented 
to the Gentiles under a false character and in an unworthy light.* 

Lazarus the beggar f lay at their gate covered with sores : at the 
gate, and without it, for the Gentiles were " aliens from the common- 
wealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise '"—full 
of sores, for their sins and their miseries were infinite. These sores of 
the Gentile world are enumerated by St. Paul, Horn. i. 23-32 ; though 
the term will include, besides the sins, the penal miseries which were 
consequent on those sins. But these sores, these " wounds and bruises 
and putrifying sores" (Isai. i. 6), were neither closed, nor bound, nor 
mollified with ointment, so that the dogs came and licked them. Here, 
as must so often happen, there is a question whether this last circum- 
stance has any distinct signification, or is added only to complete the 
picture. Are there indicated here the slight and miserable assuage- 
ments of its wants and woes, — the wretched medicine for its hurts, 
which the heathen world derived from its poets and philosophers and 
legislators, as Lomeier proposes 1 or is it meant that even in this depth 



* H. de Sto. Yictore: Non ad caritatem sed ad elationem doctrinam legis 
habuit. And Gregory {Horn. 40) explains the refusal of the crumbs : Gentiles ad' 
cognitionem legis, superbi Judaei non admittebant. 

f Theophylact: rieV^y &elav x a P iT<av Ka ' 1 ffo<pias. 



388 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

of man's misery, nature spake to him, in faint and feeble accents, of 
mercy and love (Acts xiv. 17), and evidently sympathized with man, so 
that he found comfort in her sympathy ? But the other circumstance 
has plainly a meaning, namely, that the beggar desired to be fed from 
the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. It cannot, indeed, be 
said that the Gentiles directly desired the satisfaction of their spiritual 
hunger from the Jews, for we know this, from one cause or other, was 
not in a very great degree the case ; though indeed the spread of Juda- 
ism, and the inclination which existed to embrace it, is more than once 
noted by the Roman writers in the times of the first emperors.* But 
the yearning of their souls after something better and truer than aught 
which they possessed, was, in fact, a yearning after that which the Jew 
did possess, and which, had he been faithful to his privileges and his po- 
sition, he would certainly have imparted. Christ was " the Desire of all 
nations ;" every yearning after deliverance from the bondage of sin and 
corruption, which found utterance in the heart of any heathen, was in 
truth a yearning after him ; so that implicitly and unconsciously the 
heathen was desiring to be fed from the Jews' table, desiring from thence 
an alleviation of his wants, but desiring it in vain. 

The dying of Lazarus, and his reception into Abraham's bosom, will 
find their answer in the abolition of that economy under which the Gen- 
tile was an outcast from the covenant, and in his subsequent entrance 
into all the immunities and consolations of the kingdom of God ; — "which 
in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which 
had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." (1 Pet. i. 10; 
Ephes. ii. 1 1-13.) But Dives dies also, — the Jewish economy also comes 
to an end, — and now Dives is in torments, — a i?i hell?" surely not too 
strong a phrase to describe the misery and despair, the madness and 
blindness and astonishment of heart, which are the portion of a people, 
that having once known God, fall from that knowledge, of an apostate 
and God-abandoned people. The fundamental idea of hell is exclusion 
from the presence of God ; and this utter exclusion was the portion of 
that people upon whom his wrath came to the uttermost. Who can 
read the history of the latter days of the Jewish nation, a history which 
has been providentially preserved to us in some of its minutest details, 
of the time when that nation seemed to realize the fable of the scorpion 
girdled with fire and fixing its sting in its own body, and not feel that 
all which really constitutes hell was already there ? Nay, and ever since 
have they not been " in torments . ? " In proof let us turn to that sure 
word of prophecy, which foretells their doom should they fall away, as 
they have fallen away, from their God ; for instance, to Lev. xxvi. 14-39, 

* See Neander's History of the Church, v. 1, p. 84 (English transl.). 



THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 389 

or Deut. xxviii. 15-68, or call to mind the Lord's words which speak of 
the weeping and gnashing of teeth, which shall be their portion, when 
they see the despised Gentiles coming from the east and the west, from 
the north and from the south, and sitting down in the kingdom of God, 
while tiny themselves are thrust out.* (Luke xiii. 28-30.) But as 
Dives looked for some consolation from Lazarus, whom before he des- 
pised, so the Jew is looking for the assuagement of his miseries through 
some bettering of his outward estate, — some relaxation of severities im- 
posed upon him, — some improvement of his civil condition, — things which 
he looks for from the kingdoms of the world, and which if they gave him, 
would be but as a drop of water on the tongue. He knows not that the 
wrath of God does in truth constitute his misery ; and so long as this is 
unremoved, he is incapable of true comfort. The alleviation which he 
craves is not given, it were in vain to give it ; — the one true alleviation 
would be that he should be himself received into the kingdom of God, 
that he should bewail his guilt, and look on him whom he pierced, and 
mourn because of him : then consolations would abound to him ; but 
without this, every thing else is but as the drop of water on the fiery 
tongue. That there is no allusion in the parable to any future time, 
when the great gulf of unbelief which now separates the Jew from his 
blessings shall be filled up, makes nothing against this interpretation ; 
since exactly the same argument might be applied, and we know incor- 
rectly, to call in question the ordinary explanation of the parable of the 
Wicked Husbandmen ; nothing is there said of the vineyard being 
restored to its first cultivators, which yet we know will one day be the 
case. 

By the five brethren of Dives will be set forth to us according to this 
scheme all who hereafter, in a like condition and with like advantages, 
are tempted to the same abuse of their spiritual privileges. The Gentile 
Church is in one sense Lazarus brought into Abraham's bosom ; but 
when it sins as the Jewish Church did before it, glorying in its gifts, but 
not using them for the calling out of the spiritual life of men, contented 
to see in its very bosom a population that are outcast, save in name, from 
its privileges and blessings, and to see beyond its limits millions of hea- 
thens to whom it has little or no care to impart the knowledge of Christ 
and of his salvation, — then in so far as it thus sins, it is only too like 
the five brethren of Dives, who are in danger of coming with him, and 
for sins similar to his, to this place of torment. Nor are we to imagine 
that, before judgment is executed upon a Church thus forgetful of its 
high calling, it will be roused from its dream of security by any startling 
summonses, — any novel signs and wonders, — any new revelation, — any 

* Theophylact : K Ev rrj <p\oy\ KaraKaiovrai rod <p&6vov. 



390 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 

Lazarus rising from the dead and bidding it to repent. It has enough 
to remind it of its duty, — it has its deposit of truth, — its talent wherewith 
it was hidden to trade till its Lord's return. So that the latter part of 
the parable, thus contemplated, speaks to us Gentiles in the very spirit 
of those awful words which St. Paul addressed to the G-entile converts at 
Rome : " Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of Grod : on them 
which fell severity, but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his 
goodness ; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Rom. xi. 22.) 



XXVII. 

UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 

Luke xvii. 7-10. 

Some interpreters find a connection between this parable and the dis- 
course which precedes it, while others affirm that no such can be traced, 
— that the parable must be explained without any reference to the say- 
ing concerning faith which goes immediately before. Theophylact sup- 
poses this to be the link between the parable and the preceding verse : 
the Lord had there declared the great things which a living faith would 
enable his disciples to perform — how they should remove mountains; 
but then, lest these great things which were in the power of their faith 
should cause them to fall into a snare of pride, the parable was spoken 
for the purpose of keeping them humble.* Augustine confesses the dif- 
ficulty of tracing the connection, and has a very singular explanation of 
the whole parable, which I must be content to refer to,f as it would take 
up considerable space to do it justice. Olshausen gives this explanation : 
The apostles by that account which went before of the hindrances they 
would meet in their work (ver. 1, 2), of the hard duties, hard as they then 
seemed to them, which were required of them (ver. 3, 4), had a longing 
awakened in them after a speedier reward. The Lord therefore would 
set before them their true relation to him ; that their work, difficult or 
not, welcome or otherwise, must be done — that they were not their own, 
but his, and to labor for him. If they found their labor a delight, well ; 
but if not, still it was to be done. Neither were they to look for their 
reward and release from toil at once,J but rather to take example of the 

* So Cajelan : Petierant Apostoli adjungi sibi donum confidential, quod et eis 
oollatum intelligitur. Et quoniam etiani superbia bonis operibus insidiatur ut 
psreant, ideo Jesus adjungit parabolam conservativam eorum in vera recognitions 
suimet, ne extollantur. 

f Quczst. Evang., 1. 2, c. 39. Maldonatus, who denies that there is any con- 
nection, thinks Augustine's very forced and unnatural. 

$ Eu&eW (ver. 7). 



392 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 

servant, who though he had "been strenuously laboring all the day in the 
field, " ploughing or feeding cattle" yet not the less when he returned 
home had to resume his labors in the house also. Such is his explana- 
tion, and no doubt he here asserts an important truth, and one found in 
the parable ; but to the connection, as he traces it, there is this objection, 
that the request, " Lord, increase our faith," does not seem to convey any 
such meaning as he finds in it ; there is no appearance as if those who 
made it were desirous of escaping a dispensation committed to them, or 
snatching prematurely at a reward. Other expositors have neglected to 
seek any immediate connection between the parable a«d the context in 
which it is found, affirming that it teaches generally how God is debtor 
to no man, that all we can do is of duty, nothing of merit, and that in all 
our work we must retain the acknowledgment of this, and carefully guard 
against all vainglory and elation of heart ; how rather we must be deeply 
humbled before God out of the thought that, did we do all, we should 
only do that we were bound to ; and how then must it be, when we fall 
so infinitely short of that all % 

But altogether different from any of these interpretations is that first 
formally proposed, if I mistake not, by Grotius, and which Venema* 
has taken up and strengthecl with additional arguments and illustra- 
tions. The parable, they say, is not meant to represent at all the stand- 
ing of the faithful under the new covenant, " the perfect law of liberty," 
but the merely servile standing of the Jew under the old, and it grew 
in this manner out of the discourse preceding. The disciples had 
asked for increase of faith. The Lord in answer would teach them the 
necessity and transcendent value of that gift for which they were ask- 
ing, would magnify its value, showing them how all outward works 
done without this living principle of free and joyful obedience, such as 
for the most part the men of their own nation were content with, were 
merely servile, and were justly recompensed with a merely servile re- 
gard, — that in those God could take no pleasure, and for them counted 
that he owed no thanks ; the servants who did them were after all un- 
profitable and of no account in his sight. 

The arguments of Grotius and Venema are mainly these. They 
object to the common interpretation, that it sets forth in a wrong aspect 
the relations which exist between Christ and his people. They ask, Is 
it likely that the gracious Lord who in another place said, " Henceforth 
I call you not servants, . . . but I have called you friends," would here 
wish to bring forward in so strong a light the service done to him as one 
merely servile, and for which he would render them no thanks 1 would 
he, whp ever sought to lead his disciples into the recognition of their 

* Diss. Sac, p. 262, seq. 



UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 393 

filial relation to God, that they had received not the spirit of bondage 
but of adoption, here throw them back so strongly on their servile rela- 
tion % It was not, they say, in this spirit that b/e spake those words, 
u Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find 
watching : verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make 
them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." (Luke 
xii. 37.) On the other hand the parable does, they affirm, exactly set 
forth the relation of the Jews, at least of the greater part of them, to 
God. They were hired to do a certain work, which if they did, they 
were, like servants, free from stripes : they had too their stipend — they 
ate and drank — they received their earthly reward. But going no fur- 
ther than this bare fulfilling of the things expressly enjoined* them, and 
fulfilling them without love, without zeal, without the filial spirit of faith, 
contented to stop short when they had just done so much as would ena- 
able them, as they hoped, to escape punishment, going through' their 
work in this temper, they were " unprofitable servants" in whom the 
Lord could take no pleasure, and who could look for no further marks 
of favor at his hands.f 



* Exactly the same stress which they would here lay on ra Starax^vra is laid 
by Origen (In Rom., 1. 3), although his purpose, as will be seen, is different : 
Donee quis hoc facit tantum quod debet, i. e., ea quae praeccpta sunt, inutilis 
servus est. (Laic. xvii. 10.) Si autem addas aliquid praeceptis, tunc non jam 
inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te : Euge serve bone et fidelis. (Matt. xxv. 21.) 
St. Bernard too (In Cant., Serm. 11, c. 2), without indeed making Origen's danger- 
ous use of the passage, and lowering the standard of piety for the ninety-nine, in 
the hope of exalting it for the one, has implicitly the same explanation of the 
passage as that mentioned in the text. Expounding Cant. i. 2, he has occasion to 
speak of a service, rendered indeed, but without joy and alacrity and delight, and 
ends thus : Denique in Evangelio qui hoc solum, quod facere debet, facit servus 
inutilis reputatur. Mandata forsan utcumque adimpleo : sed anirna mea sicut terra 
sine aqua in illis. Ut igitur holocaustuni meum pingue fiat, osculctur me, quaeso, 
osculo oris sui. 

t Grotius (in loc.) is especially rich in materials in support of this interpreta- 
tion of the parable. From Maimonides he quotes a Jewish proveb, Ei datur prae- 
mium qui quid injussus facit: and from Chrysostom (In Rom. Mm.) a passage 
contrasting the obedience of the Jew and the Christian : Kaneivoi Se <p6fia) rifxupias 
irdvTa eirparrou ay6fj.cvoi. ol Se irvtvfjLOTiKol £7ri&v/j.la nai tt6&({>, Kai tovto SrjXovcrt rt£ Kal 
vTrep&alveij/ ra eTriTay/jLara. We might compare, especially with that Jewish pro- 
verb, one of the Similitudes in the Shepherd of Hennas (1. 3, sim. 5), which is 
briefly this : A householder planted a vineyard, and going from home, left his 
servant the task of tying the vines to their supports, and no more ; but the servant 
having finished this task, thought it would profit the vineyard, if also he were to 
weed it and dig it, which he did; and the master found it in high order and beauty 
on his return. Well pleased with his servant, because he had thus done more than 
was enjoined him, he determined to give him the adoption of sonship, and to make 
him fellow-heir with his own son. It is true that Hermas makes an application of 



394 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS 

It is not to be denied that there is something attractive in this ex- 
position,* or that it is worthy of respectful consideration ; but yet it 
might be fairly replied in this way to the arguments of those that up- 
hold it. The present parable need not be opposed to, but rather should 
be balanced with, that other saying of the Lord's (Luke xii. 37) quoted 
above, — should be considered as supplying the counterweight of all such 
declarations. This is^ the way God might deal ; for we may observe, it 
is not said that this is the way he ivill deal, since rather that other is 
the manner in which he will actually bear himself towards his faithful 
servants ; — the one relation is that which according to the strictness of 
justice he might assume, the other is that which according to the riches 
of his grace he will assume. "We, to keep us humble, are evermore to 
acknowledge that upon that footing he might put our relation to him, 
having, at the same time this assurance, that so long as we put it upon 
that footing, he will not ; for so long, we are capable of receiving his 
favors without being corrupted by them. It is only to the humble, to 
the self-abased before God, that he can give grace, for where this humil- 
ity is not, it is certain that, as the unclean vessel will altogether taint 
the wine poured into it, so the gifts of G-od will be perverted to spiritual 
wickedness, more dangerous and more deadly than the natural corrup- 
tions of man's heart. And although, doubtless, the relation of the 
Christian to his Lord is set forth here under somewhat a severer! aspect 
than is usual under the New Covenant, yet the experience of every 
heart will bear witness how needful it is that this side of the truth, aa 

the similitude different from what one would expect, and not bearing upon our 
parable, but yet the passage is in itself remarkable. Seneca (De Bene/., 1. 3, c. 
18-28) treats an interesting question which bears on the present object : An bene- 
ficium dare domino servus possit 1 which he answers in the affirmative : Quamdiu 
prfestatur quod a servis exigi solet [to. Sicn-ax&eVra] ministerium est, ubi plus 
quam quod servo necesse est, beneficium : ubi in affectum amici transit, desinit 
vocari ministerium. . . . Quicquid est quod servilis officii formulam excedit, quod 
non ex imperio sed et voluntate praestatur, beneficium est. He has much more on 
the same subject. 

* It is TVetstein's also: Sunt nimirum servi qui serviunt serviliter, hoc est, 
qui nil nisi jussi faciunt : alii serviunt liberaliter, ut filii qui, non exspectato man- 
date, ex generosa et nobili indole, sponte et injussi ea faciunt, quae utilia ct Domino 
placitura credunt. Illos Christus hie perstringit et vituperat eo fine ut discipulos 
ad altiorem gradum perducat. 

•f At the same time, our translation makes it wear even a severer aspect than is 
need, while it has rendered exet X°-P lv K - T - *■• '■> u Doth he thank that servant?" thua 
seeming to cut off any recognition at all of the servant's work. It would be better, 
" Doth he count himself especially beholden to that servant V as Weisse gives it, 
Weiss er dem Knecht besondern Dank 1 So Heb. xii. 28, ex^H-^ X"P IU - wmc h 
should be translated, " Let us have the thankfulness." See Tittman's Synonymy 
I. V. axpewt. 



UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 395 

well as the other, should be set out, — that in hours when we are tempted 
to draw back, to shun and to evade our tasks, we should then feel that a 
necessity is laid upon us, — that indeed while we do them willingly, we 
do them also the most acceptably : yet whether willingly or not, they 
must be done, — that we are servants who are not to question our Mas- 
ter's will, but to do it. Good for us it is that we should have the check 
of considerations like these upon us in such moments, and should thus 
be kept in the way of duty, till the time of a more joyful and childlike 
obedience again comes round. This fear does not exclude love, but is 
its true guardian: they mutually uphold and support one another;* for 
our hearts, while yet they are not made perfect in love, are not such 
that they can be presented with motives drawn only from gratitude and 
love. These indeed, must ever be the chief and prominent motive to 
obedience (Rom. xii. 1), and so long as they prove sufficient, the others 
will not appear ; but it is well for us that behind these, there should be 
other sterner and severer summonses to duty, ready to come forward and 
make themselves felt, when our evil and our corruption causes them to 
be needed. Well for us, too, is it, that while the Lord is pleased gra- 
ciously to accept our work and to reward it, we should ever be reminded 
that it is an act of his free grace, of his unmerited mercy, by which our 
relation to him has been put upon this footing. For there is also 
another footing (that of the parable) upon which it might have been put, 
— yea, upon which, though he does not, yet we must evermore put it, so 
far at least as is needful for the subduing every motion of pride and 
vainglory — every temptation to bring in God as our debtor because of 
our work, — which, inconceivable as it must appear when we calmly con- 
template the matter, is yet what men are evermore on the point of doing, f 
A more real difficulty in the parable, as it appears to me, is this, 
that of the first part of it (ver. 7, 8) the purpose seems, to commend pa- 
tience in the Lord's work, — that we do not desire to be dismissed before 
the time from our labors, or snatch too early at the reward ; but rather 
take example from the hind, who only looks to rest and refresh himself, 
when his master has no further need of his service : that, in the words 



* Guerricus (Bernardi Oper., v. 2, p. 1028, ed. Bened.) : Neque enim timor iste 
quern amor castum facit, gaudium tollit, sed custodit ; non destruit, sed instruit ; 
non inamaricat, sed condit ; ut tanto sit durabilius, quantd modestius, tant6 verims, 
quant6 severius, tant6 dulcius, quanta sanctius. 

f Ambrose (Exp. in Luc, 1. 8, c. 32) : Agnosce esse te servum plurimis obse- 
quiis defoeneratum. Non te prseferas, quia filius Dei diceris : agnoscenda gratia, 
sed non ignoranda natura. Neque te jactes si bene servisti, quod facere debuisti. 
Obsequitur sol, obtemperat luna, serviunt angeli. . . . Et nos ergo non a nobis 
laudem exigamus, nee prseripiamus judicium Dei et praeveniamus sententiam judi- 
cls: sed suo tempori, suo judici reservemus. 



396 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 

of the son of Sirach (xi. 20) we learn to wax old in our work, and so 
long as we are here, see in one task but a stepping-stone to another. 
Such appears the lesson of the first part of the parable, — that we do not, 
after we have made some exertion, smaller or greater, account that we 
have a claim to be exempted henceforth from strenuous toil ; but on tho 
contrary, ever, as we have surmounted one hill of labor, perceive a new 
one rising above it, and gird ourselves for the surmounting of that also. 
But in the second part (ver. 9, 10) it is no longer this patient continue 
ance in well-doing, but humility, that is enjoined, the confession that we 
are not doing God a favor in serving him, but that all we can do is of 
merest duty, — that our service at best is poor and of little value. I sup- 
pose, however, the solution is, that impatience under deferred reward, 
with the desire to be released from labor, springs from over-estimation 
of our work ; while he who feels that all which he has yet done is little, 
that it is all poor and mean, as he will not count that it gives him a 
claim henceforward to be exempted from labor, but will rather desire 
some new field of labor where he may approve himself a better servant 
than he has yet done, so neither will he count that it gives him a right 
to consider G-od as his debtor. The two wrong states of mind, springing 
from the same evil root, are to be met by the same remedy, by the learn- 
ing to know what our actual relation to Grod is, — that it is one of servants 
to a master, and being such, it precludes us alike from all right of claim- 
ing release when we please, and so also from all right to extol or exalt 
ourselves for the doing of that, which by the very laws of our condition 
we are bound to, — which not to do were great guilt, but which to do is 
no merit. i 

With regard to the actual words of the parable, there is not much to 
remark. All are aware that the waiting at table with the dress suc- 
cinct was a mark of servitude,* which to keep in mind makes more won- 
derful the condescension of the Son of G-od in his saying, Luke xii. 37, 
and in his doing, John xiii. 4. "With regard to the confession which he 
puts into the mouths of his disciples,! " Wke?i ye shall have done, all 
those things which are commanded you, say,% We are unprofitable ser- 
vants ;" we may truly observe, as many have observed before, if this they 
are to say when they have done all, how much more, and with how far 
deeper self-abasement and shame, when their consciences bear them wit- 

* Venema quotes from Philo (De Vita Contempl.) a passage concerning the 
Egyptian Therapeutae, which gives remarkable evidence of this : "A^&xrroi Se /cai 
KO&eti4voi rods xiTwj/icr/cous elcrlacriv vTrriper^ffoures, %vskol rod fi^dei/ etScaXov < irKpepecrfrai 
Sov\oirpeTrovs ffxhpa-Tos els tovto rb <rvfxir6(Tiov. 

f Augustine : Contra pestem vanse glorise diligentissime militans. 

£ Bengel : Miser est quern Dominus servum inutilem appellat (Matt. xxv. 30), 
beatus qui se ipse. 



UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS. 397 

ness, as his conscience must bear witness to every man, that so far from 
having done all that was commanded, they have in innumerable things 
grievously failed and come short of their duty, of what they might and 
ought to have done.* 

* Cajetan : Quod igitur dicitur, Quum feceritis omnia, non ideo dicitur, quod 
facturi essent omnia : sed quod si etiam faciunt omnia, sed quod quum merita 
habuerint facientium omnia prsecepta, recognoscant se servos inutiles ; ut a fortiori 
se recognoscant minus quam inutiles, hoc est debitores et reos multorum, quae 
debebant seu debent facere. — Our Church in her 14th Article has used this parable 
against the Romish doctrine of works of supererogation. Cf. Gerhard's hoc. 
TheoU., loc. 18, c. 8, $ 91 



XXVIIL 
THE UNJUST JUDGE. 

Luke xviii. 1-8. 

This parable is addressed to the disciples, and stands, as Theophylact 
and others have noted, in closest relation with what has gone immediately 
before, with the description of the sufferings and distress of the last 
times, when even the disciples " shall desire to see one of the days of the 
Son of man, and shall not see it." (xvii. 22.) Then will be, according 
to the deeply significant image in use among the Jews, and sanctioned 
by our Lord, the birth-pangs of the new creation,* and the distresses of 
that time are the motive here set forth for prayer, — distresses which 
shall always be felt, but then at the last felt more intensely than ever. 
" He spake a parable unto them, that men ought ahvays to pray" that 
men must needs pray always, if they would escape the things coming on 
the earth — that such was the only condition of their escaping. It is not 
»o much the duty or suitableness, as the absolute necessity, of instant 

persevering prayer that is here declared. f Nor is this all that the par- 

» 

* 'Apxh wSiVwj/, Matt. xxiv. 8. Compare John xvi. 21, and Rom. viii. 22, va<ra 
r) KTLffis crvvwdivei. 

f Compare two remarkable sermons by Chrysostom (De Precatione), which 
turn a good' deal on this parable, and contain many remarkable things on the 
extreme needfulness of prayer ; he calls it the medicine expelling spiritual sick- 
nesses — the foundation of the spiritual building — that to the soul which the nerves 
are to the body. He likens the man without prayer to the fish out of water and 
gasping for life — to a city without walls, and exposed to all assaults ; but from him 
that is armed with prayer the tempter starts back, as midnight robbers start back 
when they see a sword suspended over a soldier's bed. — Some have questioned 
whether these sermons are Chrysostom's, and the Benedictine editors (v. 2, p. 778) 
speak doubtfully, the main argument against them being, that Sennacherib is 
twice spoken of in them as king of the Persians, an error it is thought which 
Chrysostom could scarcely have committed. But if it is to be considered an error, 
It is quite or nearly as difficult to imagine any one else, who could write these 



THE UNJUST JUDGE. 399 

ble teaches, but it gives us further some very deep insight into the nature 
and essence of prayer. 

In this precept, to pray always* (with which we may compare 
Ephes. vi. 18 ; 1 Thess. v. 17), there is nothing of exaggeration, nothing 
commanded which may not be fulfilled, when we understand of prayer 
as the continual desire of the soul after God ; having indeed its times 
of intensity, seasons of an intenser concentration of the spiritual life, but 
not being confined to those times ; since the whole life of the faithful 
should be, in Origen's beautiful words, one great connected prayer.f — 
or, as St. Basil expresses it, prayer should be the salt which is to salt 
every thing besides. " That soul," says Donne, " that is accustomed to 
direct herself to God upon every occasion, that as a flower at sun-rising, 
conceives a sense of God in every beam of his, and spreads and dilates 
itself towards him, in a thankfulness, in every small blessing that he 
sheds upon her, . . . that soul who, whatsoever string be stricken in her, 
base or treble, her high or her low estate, is ever turned towards God, 
that soul prays sometimes when it does not know that it prays. "J Many 
and most worthy 'to be repeated are Augustine's sayings on this matter, 
drawn as they are from the depths of his own Christian life. Thus, in 
one place, " It was not for nothing that the apostle said, l Pray without 
ceasing.' Can we, indeed, without ceasing bend the knee, bow the body, 
or lift up the hands, that he should say, ' Pray without ceasing V There 
is another interior prayer without intermission, and that is the longing 
of thy heart. Whatever else thou mayest be doing, if thou longest after 
that Sabbath of God, thou dost not intermit to pray. If thou wishest 
not to intermit to pray, see that thou do not intermit to desire — thy con- 
tinual desire is thy continual voice. Thou wilt be silent, if thou leave 
off to love, for they were silent of whom it is 'written, ' Because iniquity 
shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." The coldness of love is 
the silence of the heart — the fervency of love is the cry of the heart."§ 

sermons failing into it. But it should be called a mistake ; the names of the three 
great Eastern monarchies were of old continually confounded, and this where it is 
impossible that ignorance could have been the cause. Thus Darius is called (Ezra 
vi. 22) king of Assyria and Artaxerxes (Neh. xiii. 6) king of Babylon ; the ex- 
planation being, that the three first empires, as we call them, were considered not 
as different, but as one and the same empire, continued under different dynasties. 
D'Herbelot (Bibl. Orient., s. v. Nouh) mentions something of the sort as being the 
view of the modern East: II faut remarquer ici, que les Orientaux comprennent 
dans les dynasties des anciens Rois de Perse, les Assyriens, les Babyloniens, et les 
Medes. 

* Tirinas sets forth Avell this "always:" ISTon obstante tjedio, metu, tentatione, 

•f Mia iieydx-r] (Tvv^x^ ein ) Tpoffevxy- * 

^ Sermon XI. On the Purification. 

$ Enarr. in Ps. xxxvii. 10: Ipsum desiderium tuum, oratio tua est, et si con- 



400 THE UNJUST JUDGE. 

But he who knew how easily we are put off from prayer, and under what 
continual temptations to grow slack in it, especially if we find not at 
once the answer we expect, warns us against this very thing, bidding us 
to pray always, and " not to faint"* not to grow weary, since in due sea- 
son we shall reap if we faint not ; and in proof of this he brings forward 
the parable of the Unjust Judge, with whom the feeble importunities of 
the helpless widow did yet so mightily prevail, that they at length ex- 
torted from him the boon which at fifst he was determined to deny. 

None but the Son of God himself might have ventured to use this 
comparison. It had been overbold on the lips of any other. For as in 
the parable of the Friend at Midnight we were startled with finding God 
compared to a churlish neighbor, so here with finding him likened to an 
unrighteous judge. Yet we must not seek therefore to extenuate — as 
some have been at great pains to do, and by many forced constructions 
— his unrighteousness ;f but on the contrary, the greater we conceive 
that to have been, the more does the consoling and encouraging truth 
which the Lord would enforce come out, the more strong the argument 
for persevering prayer becomes. If a bad man will yield to the mere 
force of the importunity which he hates, how much more certainly will 
a righteous God be prevailed on by the faithful prayer which he loves.j. 
The fact that the judge is an unrighteous one, is not an accident cleav- . 
ing to the earthly form under which the heavenly truth is set forth, and 
which would have been got rid of, if it conveniently could, but is rather 
a circumstance deliberately and voluntarily chosen for the mightier set- 
ting forth of that truth. In two strokes is described the wickedness of 

tinuum desiderium, continua oratio. . . . Frigus caritatis, silentium cordis est: 
flagrantia caritatis, clamor cordis est ; and elsewhere : Tota vita Christiani boni 
sanctum desiderium est ; and again : Lingua tua ad lioram laudat, vita tua semper 
laudet. Cf. Ep. 130, c. 8. 

* 'EKnaveiv — a word of not unfrequent use with St. Paul, hut elsewhere in the 
New Testament only here. Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. lxv. 20), warns against the 
danger of this "fainting:" Multi languescunt in oratione, et in novitate sure con- 
versions ferventer orant, postea languid^, postea frigid^, postea negligenter ; quasi 
securi fiunt. Vigilat hostis ; dormis tu. . . . Ergo non deficiamus in oratione : ille 
quod concessurus est, etsi differt, non aufert. 

t For a monstrous specimen of the explanations, of which the aim is to get rid 
of the aSiKin of the judge, see Theophylact (in loc.)— it is not, however, approved 
by him. It is also adduced by Pseudo-Athanasius (De Parab. Script., qu. 30), and 
mentioned in Suicer, Thes., s. v. Kpni\s. It stands parallel with the extraordinary 
explanation of Nathan's parable of the Ewe Lamb (2 Sam. xii. 1), given by 
Ambrose (Apolog. Proph. David., c. 5). 

X Augustine (Serm. 115, c. 1) : Si ergo exaudivit qui oderat quod rogabatur, 
quomodo exaudit qui ut rogemus, hortatur 1 and Tertullian, on the holy violence 
of prayer : Ha?c vis Deo est grata. Clemens too (Potter's ed., p. 947) : Xalpei i 
©ebs rei roiavra 7)TTu>fj.evos. 



THE UNJUST JUDGE. 401 

the earthly judge : he "feared not God, neit/ier regarded man." " He 
feared not God :" all that God's law had said concerning the judge's 
charge and the unrighteous judge's guilt, he counted light of (Exod. 
xxiii. 6-9; Lev. xix. 15; Deut. i. 16, 17; 2 Chron. xix. 6, 7) ; nor 
merely was there wanting in him that higher motive, the fear of God ; 
but its poor and miserable substitute, the respect for the opinion of the 
world, was equally inoperative ; he had reached that point of reckless 
wickedness, that he was alike indifferent to either. And what was worse 
than all, he dared to avow this contempt to himself. The case, there- 
fore, of any suppliant was the more hopeless, especially of one weak and 
poor — weak, so that she could not compel him to do her justice — and 
poor, so that she could not supply him with any motive, why for her sake 
he should brave, it might be, the resentment of formidable adversaries. 
Such, no doubt, is the widow of the parable, one " that is a widow in- 
deed and desolate." Many writers have noticed the exceeding desola- 
tion of the state of widowhood in the East, and the obviousness of the 
widow, as one having none to help her, to all manner of oppressions and 
wrongs ;* of this, the numerous warnings against such oppression which 
Scripture contains, are sufficient evidence. (Exod. xxii. 22 ; Deut xxiv. 
17 ; xxvii. 19 ; Mai. iii. 5, and many more.) 

How fitly then does this widow represent the Churchf under perse- 
cution, not necessarily under any particular persecution, but under that 
which is always going forward, the oppression from the adverse element 
in which she draws her breath. Nor need it be only the Church at 
large which we see represented in her, but also any single soul in con- 
flict with the powers of darkness and the world. The adversary then 
(" your adversary, the Devil," 1 Pet. v. 8), is the prince of the darkness 
of this world, the head of all the powers which are arrayed against the 
manifestation of the .kingdom of God either in a single soul, or in the 
whole world , keoping down and, as far as it is allowed him, oppressing 
it ; the spiritual Herod that is ever seeking to destroy the heavenly 
child. But the elect, they who, having the first fruits of the Spirit, 



* For instance, "Ward in his Illust, ations of Scripture from the Manners and 
Customs of the Hindoos. Thus, too, Terence : 

Non, ita me Dii ament, auderet facero haec vifluae mulieri, 
Quae in me fecit. 

f Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxxxi. 15) : Omnis anima quae intelligit se desertam 
omni auxilio nisi solius Dei, vidua est ; . . . omnis Ecclesia una vidua est, deserta 
in hoc seculo ; si sentit illud, si novit viduitatem suam : tunc enim auxilium praestc 
est illi; and Qucest. Evang., 1. 2, qu. 45 : Ipsa ver6 vidua potest habere similitudi- 
nem Ecclesise, quae desolata videtur donee veniat Dominus, qui tamen in secret© 
etiam nunc curam ejus gerit. Cf. Isai. liv. 1-8. 



402 THE UNJUST JUDGE. 

groan within themselves, waiting their perfect redemption, are here rep- 
resented as in conflict with those adverse powers, as suffering oppression 
from them ; till under the sense of that oppression, and of their help- 
lessness to effect their own deliverance, a cry is wrung out from them, a 
cry generally for aid, hut chiefly for that aid which will be final and 
complete, the revelation of the Son of man in his glory, — even the cry 
of the Prophet, " Oh ! that thou wouldst- rend the heavens, that thou 
wouldst come down" (Isai. liv. 1), when the wicked shall fall and not 
rise again, when the Church shall he at rest, being for ever set free 
from all the enemies that are round about her. It would be a very im- 
perfect and slight view of those cries for deliverance, which occur so 
often in the Psalms and in the Prophets, to refer them to any particular 
and transient outward afflictions or persecutions which the Church or 
any of its members are enduring. The world is always, whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously, whether by flattery or by hostile violence, 
oppressing the Church ; and Satan evermore seeking to hinder the man- 
ifestation of the life of God in every one of her members : and prayer is 
the cry de profundis which the elect utter, the calling in of a mightier 
to aid, when they feel the danger to be urgent lest the enemy should 
prevail against them. And the words in which their need finds utter- 
ance, " Avenge me of mine adversary" wonderfully express the relation 
in which we stand to the evil of which we are conscious as mightily 
working within us ; — that it is not our very self, but an alien power, 
holding us in bondage,— not the very " I," as St. Paul (Rom. vii.) is so 
careful to assert, for then redemption would be impossible, but sin which, 
having introduced itself, is now seeking to keep us in bondage. It is 
one great work of the Spirit of God to make us feel this distinctness 
between us and the evil which is in us. The new creation is in this like 
the old, that it is a separating of the light from the darkness in the soul 
ef man, — not indeed, as yet, an entire expelling of that darkness, but a 
disengaging of the light from it, so that the light being brought into 
direct relation with him who is the fountain of all light, may act as an 
opposing power to that darkness. The good and the evil in him are no 
longer in a state of blind contradiction, but of distinct self-conscious op- 
position. The renewed man knows that he has an adversary, but for 
his comfort, he knows also that this adversary is not his very self, but 
another, so that if he resist him, he will flee from him ; he knows that 
the power which that other exercises over him is an usurpation, and 
that it will be a righteous thing for God to cast out him who obtained 
that power by fraud and by violence ; and knowing this, he is able to 
cry, with the widow in the parable, " Avenge me of mine adversary" or 
rather, since men go not to a judge for vengeance, but for justice, — " Do 



THE UNJUST JUDGE. 403 

me right on, deliver me from the oppression of, mine adversary."* And 
this is the same petition that we make daily, when we say " Deliver us 
from evil," or rather, " from the Evil One," — from him who is the 
source and centre of all evil.f 

For a time the judge was deaf to the widow's petition ; " He ivoukl 
not for a while." When it was said above that the strength of the par- 
able lay in the unlikeness between the righteous Judge of the world, 
and this ungodly earthly judge, it was not meant to be denied, — nay, 
this too is part of the teaching here, — that God often seems to man to 
be acting as this unjust judge, to be turning a deaf ear to the prayer of 
his people. For even the elect are impatient under suffering and afflic- 
tion ; they expect a speedier deliverance than God is always willing to 
vouchsafe them ; they think they have a claim to be heard and delivered 
more promptly than God thinks good.J They cry, and when they re- 
ceive no speedy answer, but are left, as it appears to them, long in the 
han# of their enemies, or in the furnace of affliction, they are tempted 
to hard thoughts of God, as though he took part with, or at least was 
contented to endure, the proud oppressors, while the cry of his afflicted 
people was as nothing in his ears ; they are tempted to say with the 
storm-tost disciples, " Carest thou not that we perish V Now the para- 
ble is in fact intended, as we shall presently see, to meet this very diffi- 
culty and temptation, to which the faithful, suffering long under sore 
earthly trials, are exposed. — We have in ver. 4, 5, recorded, not of course 
what the judge spoke aloud, scarcely what he spoke in his own hearing, 
but the voice of his heart, as that heart spake in the hearing of God.§ 
" He said withi?i nimself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet 
because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge Jier, lest by her continual 
coming she weary\\ me." He was not impelled in the matter by any 

* Schleusner, s. v. e/cfr/cew.: Assere me juredicundo ab injuria adversarii mei. 
The Vulgate : Vindrca me de adversario meo. 

f The analogy of other passages, Matt. xiii. 19, 39 ; Eph. vi. 16 ; 2 Thess. iii. 3, 
would lead us to translate in the Lord's prayer, irovrjpov not as a neuter, but 
masculine ; and all the quotations in Suicer's T/ies., s. v. show that it was so inter- 
preted in the Greek Church. 

$ Augustine, Enarr. 2* in Ps. xxxiv. 17. 

§ Bernard : Audit Deus in corde cogitantis, quod nee ipse audit qui cogitat. 

|| He uses a very strong expression here, imonndCri, from vir&inov, the part of the 
face under the eyes. TTahl : inroowioifa, sugillo, ut sub oculis vivices et maculae 
luridae existant. St. Paul uses the same word (1 Cor. ix. 27) to describe the hard 
discipline to which he submitted his body. Both there and here there is another 
reading, {moTridfa or wroirufa, instead of inrwiridfa, which is not without some 
authorities in its favor. It is easy, however, to see how, in the present instance, that 
reading arose, the transcribers thinking this too strong an expression for any thing 
which the widow could effect ; for how could she punish him till his face became 



404 THE UNJUST JUDGE. 

other motive than a selfish regard for his own ease and quiet ; but lest 
these should be continually disturbed and broken in upon, he does her 
right, that so he may be rid of her, — that she may not plague nor vex 
him any more, as it was the same motive, though of course in a much 
milder form, which moved the disciples to ask for the woman of Canaan, 
that her prayer might be granted : " Send her away, for she crieth after 
us."* (Matt. xv. 23.) Indeed this parable and that miracle form alto- 
gether an interesting parallel. (Compare Sirac. xxxv. 17.) 

Between the parable and its application. — that is, between ver. 5 
and 6, — it is likely that the Lord paused for a while, and then again re- 
sumed his discourse : " Hear what the unjust judge saith ; and shall 
not God avenge his own elect 7" In the first clause of the sentence the 
emphasis should be laid on the word "unjust ;" in the other, the epithet 
of goodness which should complete the antithesis is omitted, as being 
necessarily included in the name, God ; — if the unjust judge acts thus, 
shall not the just God avenge his own elect? And the antithesis §s to 
be carried through all the members of the sentence : the righteous God 
is not only opposed to the unrighteous judge, but the elect, the precious 
before God, to the widow, the despised among men ; their prayers to her 
clamor ; and the days and nights during which those prayers are made, 

black and blue 1 But the use of so strong a term is very characteristic of the man 
described. Bengel : Hyperbole judicis injusti et impatientis personse conveniens — 
it is exactly this exaggeration of language which selfishness uses in the things 
which threaten its own ease and enjoyment; and we have numerous examples of a 
like usage of words ; thus a-KvWeiv, to vex or annoy, means properly to flay ; and 
the Spanish ahorcar, used much in the same sense, means rightly, to put to death 
by hanging ; and our English to plague, is properly, to lash ; and these examples 
might easily be multiplied. Beza's translation, obtundat, is happy,— that word 
being used exactly in this sense : thus Terence, Ne me obtundas hac de re saepius. 
The assertion made by Chrysostom {De Laz., Cone. 3, c. 5), that it was pity which 
at length moved the judge, is totally without foundation, and opposed to the spirit 
of the parable. 

* The endeavor to obtain help or redress by long-continued crying, and by 
mere force of importunity, — to extort by these means a boon or a right which is 
expected from no other motives, is quite in the spirit of the East. Thus it is 
mentioned in Chardin's Travels in Persia (I have not the book at hand to give the 
exact reference), that the peasants of the district, when their crops have failed, and 
they therefore desire a remission of the contributions imposed on their villages, or 
when they would appeal against some tyrannical governor, will assemble before the 
gates of the Schah's harem, and there continue howling and throwing dust in the air 
(Job ii. 12 ; Acts xxii. 23), and not be silenced or driven away, till he has sent out 
and demanded the cause, and thus given them at least an opportunity of stating 
their griefs; or sometimes they would beset him in the same manner, as he passed 
through the streets of the city, and thus seek to gain, and often succeed in gaining, 
their point, not from his love of justice, but from his desire to be freed from 
annoyance. See Burder's Orient. Illust., v. 2, p. 382. 



THE UNJUST JUDGE. 405 

to the comparatively short time during which she with her importunitiei 
beset the judge. The certainty that the elect will be heard rests not, 
however, on their mighty and assiduous* crying as its ultimate ground, 
but on their election of God, which is, therefore, here brought especially 
into notice,! and they called by this name of God's elect, rather than by 
any other of the many titles that might at first sight have seemed equally 
appropriate : — just as in Daniel (x'ii. 1) the deliverance of God's ser- 
vants is traced up to the same cause ; " At that time, 1 ' that is, at the 
time of extremest distress, " thy people shall be delivered, every one that 
shall be found written in the book. 1 ' Shall he not avenge them, asks the 
Lord, " though he bear long with them . ? " or since that phrase is mostly 
used in Scripture, to set forth the relation of God to the sins of men, — • 
his patience in giving them time and space for repentance, — it would 
avoid perplexity if here another phrase were used, as for instance, 
" though he bear them long in hand ?" or " though he delay with them 
long ?"J that is, long, as men count length. He may be slack in aveng- 



* 'Hfiepas koL vvKrhs here = ndvTOTe of ver. 1. Our English " cry " is but a weak 
translation of the original fioav. Tertullian translates it better by mugire ; it is a 
mighty crying (Gen. iv. 10 ; John iii. 8, LXX. ; Jam. v. 4) which is here attributed 
to the elect. 

f Bengel (on Matt. xxiv. 22) : Ubi supra robur fidelium ordinarium excedit vis 
tentationum, electio allegatur. 

$ The words Ka\ fj.aKpo^vfj.a>v eV avrols have created much difficulty. Some 
refer avro7s to the oppressors, on whom the vengeance is taken, and /j.aKpo&v/uLa>v is 
then used in its commonest sense ; " Shall not God avenge his elect, though he 
bear long with their oppressors V 1 yet against this "Wolf says truly, Impiorum, de 
quibus ultio sit sumenda, non meminit Christus. But ^a/cpo&u/zea> need not be 
necessarily, differo ultionem, but merely differo, patienter expecto ; see Heb. vi. 15; 
Jam. v. 7, 8 ; Job vii. 16 ; and especially Sirac. xxxv. 18 (in the Greek, xxxii. 18). 
Grotius seizes happily the point from which the two meanings diverge ; he says : 
Est in hac voce dilationis significatio, quae ut debitori prodest, ita gravis est ei qui 
vim patitur. Suicer, who has given rightly the meaning of the Lord's words 
(quamvis lente ad vindicandum ipsos procedat), has (s. v. ixaKpobv/xw) a good and 
useful commentary on all the latter part of the parable. The proverb may be 
brought into comparison : Habet Dens suas horas, et moras. — Since the above was 
written, I have seen an essay by Hassler (Tubing. Zeitschr., 1832, Heft 3, pp. 
117-125), wherein he finds fault with this explanation, which he denies to lie in the 
words, and makes koL naKpofrsuaiu eV avrols a description of God's patience with 
his suppliants, as contrasted with the fretful irritation of the judge under the 
solicitations of her that beset him ; and the passage, in his view, might thus be 
translated, " Shall not God avenge his own elect, when also he is patient toward 
them'?" shall he not avenge them, and so much the more while their reiterated 
prayers do not vex or weary him, as that widow's prayers vexed and wearied the 
judge — excite no impatience but only pity in his heart. Our Lord is then giving 
an additional motive why they should not faint in prayer. There may be a question, 
whether it is not the intention of the Vulgate to give this meaning, when it translates, 



406 THE UNJUST JUDGE. 

ing his people as B men count slackness," as compared with their imp* 
tience, and with their desire to he at once delivered from affliction : hut, 
indeed, " he will avenge them speedily" not leaving them a moment Ion 
ger in the fire of affliction than is needful, delivering them from -it the 
instant that patience has had its perfect work ; so that there is, and there 
is meant to he, an apparent contradiction, while yet there is no real 
one, hetween ver. 7 and that which follows. The relief which to man's 
impatience seems to tarry lorig, indeed arrives speedily ; it could not, 
according to the far-seeing and loving counsels of God, have arrived a 
moment earlier.* "We may find a practical illustration of these words 
in the whole of our Lord's conduct with the family of Bethany (John 
xi.) in the depths into which he suffered them to he brought, before he 
arrived to aid ; just as, to take a milder example, it was not till the 
fourth watch, in other words, until the last, that he came to aid his dis- 
ciples laboring in vain against an adverse and perilous sea. (Matt. xiv. 
24, 25.) 

The words with which the application of the parable concludes, 
" Nevertlieless tohen the Son of man com£th, shall lie find faith on the 
earth . ? " are perplexing, for they appear at first sight to call in question 
the success of his whole mediatorial work.f But though we have other 
grounds for believing that the Church will, at that last moment, be re- 
duced to a very little band ; yet here the point is not that there will be 
then few faithful or none, but that the faith even of the faithful will be 
almost failing ; — the distress will be so urgent, the darkness so thick, 
at the moment when at last the Son of man shall come forth for salva- 
tion and deliverance, that even the hearts of his elect people will have 
begun to fail them for fear. The lateness of the help Zechariah (xiv. 

Et patientiam habebit in illis 1 and of Luther : Und sollte G-eduld dariiber haben 1 
but dariiber is ambiguous. At all events this interpretation has no claim to be a 
new light thrown upon the passage, as the writer supposes. Homberg (Parerga, 
p. 146) had long ago proposed it, and "Wolf ( Curce, in loc.) is inclined to fall in 
with it. who sums up the meaning thus ; Patientia igitur Dei hie refertur ad audi- 
•tionem precum eiectorum, quod oppositum judicis injusti exemplum probabile 
reddit. qui non patienter audiebat vidua? querelas. 

* Unger (De Par. Jes. Nat., p. 136) : Opponuntur sibi fiaKpo^v/xav atque it 
rdxei, iUud fortasse ad hominem opinionem (ut sit, "si vel tardior videatur"), hoc 
ad sapiens Dei consilium referendum. Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. xci. 6) has some 
admirable remarks on the impatience of men, contrasted with the seeming tardi- 
ness of God. 

t TTe learn from Augustine that they were used by the Donatists, in reply to 
the Church, when she pleaded against them her numbers and her universality 
(Omnes enim hseretici in paucis et in parte sunt : Enarr. in Ps. xxxi 2). The 
Donatists answered (applying to their own day this prophecy concerning the last 
times), that the Lord himself had declared this fewness of the faithful ; how he 
>hould hardly find faith on the earth. 



THE UNJUST JUDGE. 407 

1-5) describes, under the images of the old theocracy, — Jerusalem shall 
be already taken, the enemy shall be within its walls, spoiling and deso- 
lating, when the Lord shall come forth, his feet standing on the Mount 
of Olives, to fight against its enemies. All help will seem utterly to 
have failed, so that the Son of man at his coming will hardly find faith, 
or rather that faith, the faith which does not faint in prayer, with allusion 
to ver. 1, — the faith which hopes against hope, and believes that light will 
break forth even when the darkness is thickest, and believing this contin- 
ues to pray,* — he will hardly find that faith upon earth. The verse 
stands parallel to, and may be explained by, those other words of our 
Lord's : " For the elect's sake," lest their faith also should fail, and so 
no flesh should be saved, " those days shall be shortened."! (Matt, 
xxiv. 22.) 

* Theophylact observes here on faith, as the one condition of prayer, irda-rjs 
irpocevxns Po&pov k<x\ k^ttIs 77 -k'kttis. And Augustine : Si fides deficit, oratio 
perit : quis enim orat quod non credit 1 

f Vitringa's explanation of the parable {ErTclHr. d. Parab., p. 960, seq.) is 
curious. I should think it his own, and likely to remain so. The unjust judge 
represents the Roman emperors, the importunate widow the early Church, which 
sought evermore to plead its cause before them, and by their interference to be 
delivered from its oppressors. The emperors, after a long while, undertook its 
defence, ceasing themselves to persecute, and not suffering others any more to 
persecute it, — Yet stranger than this is the view of Irenaeus {Con. Hcer., 1. 5. c, 
25), and of Hippolytus, or whoever else is the author of the treatise De Antichristo, 
c. 37. The widow is the earthly Jerusalem, Israel after the flesh, which, forgetful 
of God, turns to the unjust judge, that is, to Antichrist, for he is the despiser alike 
of God and men (ver. 2), for aid against him whom she falsely believes her 
adversary, namely, Christ. They see an allusion to the last days and to the 
mighty part which, as tney assume, the unbelieving Jews will have in the setting 
up of Antichrist's kingdom. (John v. 43 ; Dan. viii. 12.) 



XXIX. 
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 

Luke xviii. 9-14. 

The last parable was to teach us that prayer must he earnest and per- 
severing; this that it must also be humble.* Some have supposed, as ; 
for example, Vitringa,f that here too we have set forth before us the 
rejection of the Jew and the acceptance of the Gentile ; the Pharisee 
being the representative of that whole nation, which would have taken 
him as its most favorable specimen — the publican, of the Gentiles, 
with whom those despised collectors of customs were commonly classed ; 
the one glorying in his merits, proudly extolling himself above the sin- 
ners of the Gentiles, but through this very pride and self-righteousness 
failing to become partaker of the righteousness of God ; while the other, 
meekly acknowledging his vileness, and repenting of his sins, is justified 
freely by his grace. But the words with which the parable is intro- 
duced (ver. 9), and which must give the law to its interpretation, are 
opposed to this view. It was spoken " unto certain which trusted in tluem- 
selves that they were righteous^ and despised others ; the aim of it was to 

* Augustine finds a yet closer connection : Quia fides non est superborum sed 
humilium, praemissis subjecit parabolam de humilitate contra superbiam. 

f Erklar. d. Parab., p. 974. Augustine too {Enarr. in Ps. lxxiv. 8) tbinks this 
application may be made, though it is not with him the primary : Hoc latius acci- 
pientes, intelligamus duos populos, Judaeorum et Gentium: Judaeorum populus 
Pharisseus ille, Gentium populus Publicanus ille. Judaeorum populus jactabat 
merita sua, Gentium confidebatur peccata sua. So H. de Sto. Victore (Annott. in 
Luc.) : Pharisaeus, Judaicum populum significat, qui ex justificationis legibus ex- 
tollit merita sua, et superbiendo recedit. Humiliatus publicanus, Gentilem signi- 
ficat : qui longe a Deo positus, peccata confitetur, et lamentando propinquat Deo, 
et exaltatur. Schleiermacher also observes, that it contradicts the idea of a 
parable, that the Pharisee should here mean a Pharisee, or the Pharisees gener- 
ally ; but this objection yields to the fact, that the term parable is of very wide 
gignification throughout the New Testament. 



THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 409 

cure a fault which the Lord had noted in some of those that surrounded 
him. He had seen in some of his disciples, displays of spiritual pride, 
— of self-exaltation, accompanied, as they always will be, with the con- 
tempt of others. There is no hint given in the context to lead us to 
suppose that the relations of Jew and Gentile are now before him : he is 
dealing rather with a spiritual mischief, which he has observed showing 
itself in some of his own followers ; I say, in some of his own followers, 
because I cannot for an instant conceive that by the example of a Pharisee 
he is warning and rebuking the Pharisees. It would have been to no 
profit to have held up to these the spectacle of a Pharisee praying, as 
this one prays in the parable. They would have beld it only most na- 
tural and proper, that he should have prayed in this fashion.* There 
would have been for them no conviction of sin, but only for a disciple, 
for one who had advanced much further in spiritual insight, though in 
danger of falling back into pharisaic sins. Such a one would only 
need his sin to be plainly shown to him, and he would start back at its 
deformity. He would see the Pharisee in himself, and tremble and 
repent. 

" Two men went up into tlie temple to pray" we are to suppose at one 
of the fixed hours of devotion (Acts iii. 1), "the one a Pharisee and the 
otlier a Publican;'''' a Brahmin and a Pariah, as one might say, if preach- 
ing from this Gospel in India — the Pharisee, a specimen of that class of 
men, who, satisfying themselves with a certain external freedom from 
gross offences, have remained ignorant of the plague of their own hearts, 
and have never learned to say, Deliver me from mine adversary, who 
do not even know that they have an adversary ; the other, the represen- 
tative of all who, though they have much and grievously transgressed, 
are now feeling the burden of their sins, and heartily mourning them, 
who also are yearning after one who shall deliver them from those sins, 
and from the curse of God's broken law. The parable would make us 
feel how much nearer is such a one to the kingdom of God than the 
self-complacent Pharisee, or than any who share in the spirit and tem- 
per of the Pharisee, — that he indeed may be within it, while the other is 
without.! 

* Or to take another view of it, which is Mr. Greswell's : "Of what use in a 
moral point of view would it be to hold up to the Pharisee the true picture of 
himself and his sect 1 or what hope could there be of correcting his characteristic 
vices, whatever they were, by laying them bare, and exposing them openly and 
nakedly before himself? Such an exposure might be well calculated to irritate 
and offend, but not to reform or amend them; for it cannot be supposed that they 
would willingly be parties in their own disgrace or patiently acquiesce in their 
own condemnation." See also p. 248, note, some important remarks on the 
question how far this is a parable proper or not. 

t Gregory the Great {Moral., 1. 19, c. 21) wittily likens this Pharisee, and all 



410 THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 

It is a mistake growing out of forgetfulness of Jewish and early 
Christian customs, when some commentators see in the fact that the 
Pharisee prayed standing, an evidence already manifesting itself, of his 
pride.* Even the parable itself contradicts this notion, for the publi- 
can, whose prayer was a humble one, stood also. But to pray standing 
was the manner of the Jews (1 Kin. viii. 22; 2 Chron. vi. 12; Matt, 
vi. 5 ; Mark xi. 25) ; though in moments of a more than ordinary humi- 
liation or emotion of heart, they changed this attitude for one of kneel- 
ing or prostration. (Dan. vi. 10 ; 2 Chron. vi. 13 ; Acts ix. 40 ; xx. 36; 
xxi. 5.) The term station (statio) passed into the usage of the Christian 
Church ; it was so called, as Ambrose explains it, because standing the 
Christian soldier repelled the attacks of his spiritual enemy ; and on the 
Lord's day the faithful stood in prayer, to commemorate their Saviour's 
resurrection on that day ; through which they, who by sin had fallen, 
were again lifted up and set upon their feet.f Some have combined the 
words somewhat differently, and rendered the passage in this way ; 
u The Pharisee stood by himself. X and prayed." There would be cer- 
tainly something morally striking in this construction of the passage, 
indicating as it would that the Pharisee, — the separatist in spirit as in 
name,§ and now also in outward act, — desired to put a distance between 
himself and all unclean worshippers (see Isai. lxv. 5); but the other 
construction, it is generally agreed, should be adhered to. 

His prayer at first seems to promise well ; " -God, I thank thee" yet 
its early promise quickly disappears : under the pretence of thankful- 
ness to Grod, he does but thinly veil his exaltation of self ; and he can- 
not thank God for what he has done for him, without insulting and cast- 
ing scorn upon others. He thanks him indeed, but not aright : || for the 

who, because of their victory over certain temptations, are exalted with pride, and 
so perish through their very successes, to Eleazar, who killed the elephant, but 
was himself crushed by its falling body (1 Mace. vi. 46) : In prsslio elephantem 
feriens stravit, sed sub ipso quern extinxit, occubuit. 

* Tirinus : Pharisapus stans superbo et erecto animo, quasi Deum ad judicium 
provocans : so also Theophylact. It is possible however, the word may be emphatic, 
— He stood forward prominently so that all men might see him as he was engaged 
in his devotions (see Matt. vi. 5), which would then contrast with the fxaKp6^v 
iffrds, and the whole attitude of the publican ; on which see Cyprian, De Oral. 
Dam., ad init. ; and Ambrose, De Off. Minist., 1. 1, c. 18, § 70. 

■f See Bingham's Chris. Antt., b. 13, c. 8, § 3. 

\ So Cameron and J. Cappellus in the Crit. Sac, who make irphs eavToV = /ca<y 
kavr6v. 

,§ Hesychius : Qapuxcuos' a(pupi<rfj.epos, fj-efxepiff/xeuos, Ka&ap6s. St. Bernard observes 
how he isolates himself in his prayer : Gratias agit non quia bonus, sed quia solus, 
non tarn de bonis quae habet, quam de malis quae in aliis videt. 

|| Augustine says here (Serm. 115, c. 3), with an eye to the Pelagians, the 
ingrati gratia? : Quid est ergo qui impie oppugnat gratiam, si reprehenditur qui 
luperbe agit gratias ? 



THE PHAEISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 4H 

Pharisees, as Grotius well observes, " did not exclude the divine help. 
But they who allow it and use this language, are frequently ungrateful 
to it, allotting, as they do, to themselves the first share in virtuous ac- 
tions, to God the second ; or so recognizing common benefits, as to avoid 
fleeing as suppliants to that peculiar mercy, which their own sins re- 
quire."* Thus it was with him : but the right recognition of God's 
grace will always be accompanied with deep self-abasement, while we 
confess how little true we have been to that grace, — how infinitely short 
we are of what we ought to, and might, have been, having had such help 
at command ; and moreover we shall thank him as much for our needs, 
for the sense of need which he has awakened within us, as for the sup- 
plies of grace which he has given us. But this Pharisee thanks God 
that he is " not as otlier men" as the rest-of men, dividing the whole of 
mankind into two classes, putting himself in a class alone, and thrusting 
down all besides himself into the other class ; his arrogance reaches even 
to such a pitch as this ; he in one class, all the world besides in the other. 
And as he can think nothing too good for himself, so nothing too bad of 
them ; they do not merely come a little short of his excellencies, but 
they are K extortioners, unjust, adulter err sP And then, his eye alighting 
on the publican.f of whom he may have known nothing, but that he was 
a publican, he drags him into his prayer, making him to supply the 
dark background on which the bright colors of his own virtues shall 
more gloriously appear — and in the blindness of his heart finding, it 
may be, in the deep heart-earnestness with which the penitent was beat- 
ing his breast, in the fixedness of his downcast eyes, proofs in confirma- 
tion of the judgment which he passes upon him. He, thank God, has no 
need to beat his breast in that fashion, nor to cast his eyes in that shame 
upon the ground ; he has done nothing to call for this. 

So perfect is he in regard to the commands of the second table. He 
now returns to the first ; in that also he is without blame. " I fast twice 
in the week" He is evidently boasting of his works of supererogation. 
According to the law of Moses, but one fast-day in the year was ap- 

* There is an interesting anecdote told of the writer of these words, which 
connects itself with this parable. At Rostock, where he was overtaken by a 
mortal illness on his way to .Sweden, he was attended on his death-bed by a 
Lutheran clergyman, named Quistorp. "V7hen this last reminded him, with the 
fidelity due to .a dying man, on the one side, of all his sins known and unknown, 
and on the other, not of his merits and reputation which filled the world, but only 
of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, as of the one way of salvation, and of the 
publican who. had known how to lay hold of that way, Grotius replied, " I am that 
publican," and so expired. Quistorp has himself given the account in a letter to 
Calovius, the old antagonist of Grotius. 

t Augustine {Enarr. 1* in Ps. lxx. 2) : Hoc jam non est exsultare, sed in. 
sult&rc. 



412 THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 

pointed, the great day of atonement* (Lev. xvi. 29 ; Num. xxix. 7), but 
the more religious Jews, both those who were so and those who would 
seem so, and especially the Pharisees, kept two fasts weekly,! on the 
second and fifth days in the week. Thus does he : nor is this all : u 1 
give titlies of all tliat I possess ;"\ the law commanded only to tithe the 
fruit of the field and produce of the cattle (Num. xviii. 21 ; Deut. 
xiv. 22 ; Lev. xxvii. 30), but he tithed mint and cummin (Matt, xxiii. 
23), all that came into his possession, down to the trifles on which there 
was question, even in the Jewish schools, whether it was needful to tithe 
them or not. (Hos. xii. 8.) He would therefore in both respects lay 
claim to doing more than might strictly be demanded of him ; "he would 
bring in God as his debtor ; turning those very precepts concerning 
fasting and paying of tithes, which were given to men, the first to waken 
in them the sense of inward poverty and need, the second to bring them 
to feel that whatever they had, they were debtors for it to God and 
stewards of his, — turning even these into occasions for self-exaltation, 
and using them to minister to his arrogance and his pride. Acknow- 
ledgment of wants or confession of sin, there is none in his prayer, if 
prayer it can be called, which is without these. § "Had he then no 
sins to confess ? Yes, he too had sins, but perverse and knowing not 
whither he had come, he was like a patient on the table of a surgeon, 
who should show his sound limbs and cover his hurts. But let God cover 
thy hurts, and not thou: for if, ashamed, thou seekest to cover them, 
the physician will not cure them. Let him cover and cure them ; for 
under the covering of the physician the wound is healed, under the cov- 
ering of the sufferer it is only concealed ; and concealed from whom ? 
from him to whom all things are known." H 

* Called therefore tj vyo-rda, Acts xxvii. 9 ; and by Philo, j/rjorre'ias topr-ft. 

•f The Latin Fathers are led astray hy the rod o-aj8/3aTot here (in the Vulgate, 
in sabbato), and understand the Pharisee to say that he fasted twice upon the 
Sabbath. — though it is difficult to guess what they could have understood by the 
twice fasting upon one day. (See Augustine's Ep. 36, c. 4.) But the week was 
entitled, ra o-afifiara, or sometimes as here, rb o-afZfSaTou, deriving its title from its 
chiefest day, as on the other hand the Sabbath was ^lied k&Zoixas. 

X "Oo~a ktw/xcu, which should be rather, All that I acquire, or, All that I earn 
(quae mihi redeunt). It is only the perfect KenTy/mai which means, I possess, — in 
other words, I have earned. All the English translations, with the Yulgate (quae 
possideo), share in a common error. 

() Augustine (Serm. 290, c. 6): Rogare veneras, an te laudare? totum te ha- 
bere dixisti; nihil tanquam egens petisti. Quomodo ergo orare venistH And 
Serm. 115, c. 6: Parum est, non Deum rogare sed se laudare; insuper et roganti 
insultare. 

I! Augustine (Enarr. 2* in Ps. xxxi. 2), who has in the same place much more 
that is excellent on this parable. See, also, Serm. 351, c. 1 : Non enim ille Phari- 



THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 413 

It aggravates our sense of the moral outrage which is involved in the 
Pharisee's contemptuous allusion to his fellow-worshipper, if we keep in 
mind that in this last we are to see one who at this very moment was 
passing into the kingdom of God, who had come in the fulness of a con- 
trite heart, to make, as I think evidently is meant, the first deep confes- 
sion of his sins past which had ever found utterance from his lips, in 
whom under sore pangs the new man was being born. How horrible a 
thing does the Pharisee's untimely scorn appear, when we think of it, 
mingling as a harshest discord with the songs, the Te Deums of angels, 
which at this very moment hailed the lost which was found, the sinner 
that repented. For " tlie publican standing afar off" though, as Augus- 
tine observes, not afar off from God, for the Lord is nigh unto them that 
are of a contrite heart, u would not lift up so much as his eyes* unto 
heaven" to the dwelling of the Holy One, for he felt as the prodigal, 
that he had sinned against heaven (Luke xv. 18), as Ezra when he ex- 
claimed, " my God I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to 
thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our 
trespass is grown up unto the heavens." (Ezra ix. 6.) He stood " afar 
off" not that he was a proselyte or a heathen, or had not full right to 
approach, for undoubtedly he also was a Jew ; but in reverent awe, not 
presuming to press nearer to the holy place, for he knew something of 
the holiness of God, and (which always exactly keeps pace with that ' 
knowledge) of his own sinfulness and defilement : he felt that his sins 
had set him at a distance from God, and until he had received the 
atonement, the propitiation which he asks for, he could not presume to 
draw near. Moreover, he " smote upon his In-east" an outward sign of 
inward grief or self-acousationf (Luke xxiii. 48), as one judging him- 
self, that he might not be judged of the Lord, and who would acknow- 
ledge how much heavier strokes might justly come upon him, — at the 



tam sua sanitate, quam morborum alienorum comparatione gaudebat. Utilius 
autem illi erat, quoniam ad medicum venerat, ea de quibus aegrotabat confitendo 
monstrare, quam dissinmlare a vulneribus suis, et de cicatricibus alienis audere 
gloriari. Non ergo minim, si publicanus magis curatus abscessit, quern non puduit 
ratendere quod dolebat. Cf. Chrysostom, De Panit., Horn. 2, 4. 

* "Not so much as his eyes " — far less then his hands and his countenance, which 
yet would be usually lifted up in prayer (1 Tim. ii. 8 ; 1 Kin. viii. 54 ; Heb. xii. 12 ; 
Ps. xxviii. 2) ; which no doubt the Pharisee had lifted up in his. The feeling, that 
in the eyes cast down to the ground is the natural expression of shame and humi- 
liation, is permanently embodied in the word /coT^eta, from Kara and <pdos. Cf 
Tacitus (Hist. 4, 72) : Stabant conscientia flagitii maestse fixis in terrain oculis. 

f Augustine (Serm. 67, c. 1) : Tundere pectus, quid est, nisi argere quod latet 
in pcctore, et evidenti pulsu occultum castigare peccatum ; for as elsewhere he 
says : Quid est homo poenitens, nisi homo sibi irascens ? Bengel : Ubi dolor, ibi 
manus. 



414 THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN, 

same time " saying, God be merciful? to me a sinner ?\ or " to me, the 
sinful one ;" for as the other had singled himself out as the most emi- 
nent of saints, or indeed as the one holy one in the world, so the publi- 
can singles himself out as the chief of sinners, the man in whom all sins 
have met — a characteristic trait ! for who at that moment when he is 
first truly convinced of his sins, thinks any other man's sins can b'e 
equal to his own % 

And he found the mercy which he asked ; his prayer like incense 
ascended unto heaven, a sacrifice of sweet savor, while the prayer of 
the other was blown back like smoke into his own eyes ; for " G-od re- 
sisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble:" " 1 tell yoit this 
man went down to his house justified rattier tlwn the other '."J Not 
merely was he justified in the secret, unsearchable counsels of God, but 
he " went down to his house justified" with a sweet sense of a received 
forgiveness shed abroad upon his heart ; for God's justification of the 
sinner is indeed a transitive act, and passes from him to its object. The 
other meanwhile went down from the temple, his prayer being finished; 
with the same cold, dead heart, with which he had gone up. Christ does 
not mean that one by comparison with the other was justified, for there 
are no degrees in justification, but that one absolutely was justified, was 
contemplated of God as a righteous man, and the other was not ;§ so 

* 'IXaafrriTi. The selection of this word is very observable : see Passow, who 
without any reference to Scripture, shows how IxdtTKOfjLai implies not reconciliation 
only, but reconciliation effected through some gift, or sacrifice, or offering ; so that 
Cocher {Analecta, in loc.) has right when he says : Earn vocis l\a<rfrr\Ti vim esse, ut 
causam meritoriam propitiationis, nempe cruentam Christi passionem et mortem, 
simul comprehendat et indicet. 

f Augustine (In Evang. Joh., Tract. 12) : Qui confitetur peccata sua et accu- 
sat peccata sua, jam cum Deo facit. Accusat Deus peccata tua : si et tu accusas, 
conjungeris Deo. Quasi duse res sunt, homo et peccator. Quod audis homo, Deus 
fecit : quod audis peccator, ipse homo fecit. Dele quod fecisti, ut Deus salvet 
quod fecit. Oportet ut oderis in te opus tuum, et ames in te opus Dei. Cf. Serm. 
36, c. 11 ; and Enarr. in Ps. lxvi. 5. Of this publican he says {Enarr. in Ps. 
xxxix.) : Sibi non pacebat ut ille parceret, se agnoscebat ut ille ignosceret, se 
puniebat ut ille liberaret. 

t The reading SeSi/cajoyieW . . . f) £k€?vos ; which is the lectio recepta of our 
Greek Testaments, has, I believe, no MS. authority for it. whatever. It was an 
unauthorized emendation in the Elzevir edition, which has since held its place in 
the text. The question lies between the readings t) yap iwvos, which has far the 
greater amount of outward authority in its favor, but is hardly intelligible, and 
Trap iKwov, which, with less external support, has yet been received, as it seems to 
me rightly, into the text of the later critical editions. It is probable that ITAP 
having by mistake been written TAP, the insertion of r) and the change of entivov 
into inehos followed, as needful to make the words render up any sense at all. 

<) It is characteristic that this should be denied by nearly all the chief com- 
mentators of the Roman Church, though in fact this is the very truth which the 



THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 415 

that here the words found their fulfilment, u He hath filled the hungry 
with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away ;" " Though the 
Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he 
knoweth afar off." (Ps. cxxxviii. 6; Isai. lvii. 15; 1 Pet. v. 5, 6.)* And 
the whole parable fitly concludes with that weighty saying, which had 
already formed part of another of the Lord's discourses (xiv. 11), and 
which, indeed, from the all-important truth which it contains, might well 
have been often uttered : " For every one that exalteth himself shall be 
abased, and lie tliat humbleth himself sliall be exalted ;" f words which 
here form a beautiful transition to the bringing of the children to Jesus, 
the incident next recorded by our Evangelist. 

parable is to teach. Thus Maldonatus: Non significatur aut publicanum vere 
justificatum fuisse, aut vere damnatum Pharisaeum, quanquam ita Euthymius 
intelligit. He might have added many more who so understand it ; Tertullian, for 
instance {Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 36), affirms : Alteram reprobatum, alteram justifica- 
tum descendisse ; and Augustine : Nam superbia in Pharisaso de templo damnata 
descendit, et humilitas in publicano ante Dei oculos approbata ascendit. 

* Augustine says of these two in the parable {Enarr. in Ps. xciii. 12) : Hie 
superbus erat in bonis factis, ille humilis in malis factis. . . . Placuit Deo magis 
humilitas in malis factis, quam superbia in bonis. These are striking words, yet 
will not bear any close examination. There may be, and was here, a humilitas post 
mala facta, but there is no humilitas in malis factis, since in every sin there is a 
root of deadly pride out of which it grows, a daring of the creature to lift itself up 
against the Creator ; and again, there is no possibility of a superbia in bonis, since 
they cease to be good in which this pride mingles. 

t Augustine : Yidete, fratres, miraculum magnum, altus est Deus ; erigis to, et 
fugit a te ; humilias te, et descendit ad te ; and of this Pharisee {Enarr. 2* in Ps. 
xxxi. 4) : Noluit humiliari confessione iniquitatis suae ; humiliates est pondere 
mantis Dei. 



XXX. 

THE PO UNDS. 

Luke xix. 11-27. 

The chiefest part of what might else have been said upon this parable, 
has been anticipated in that of the Talents. The reasons for affirming 
this to be not the same, but another parable, have been already given. 
Not to speak of the many and important variations between the two— • 
variations so important that the two accounts can scarcely be records <?f 
the same discourse — the parables bear the most decisive marks, each 
one, of its adaptation to the peculiar circumstances under which it is 
recorded as having been spoken ; while in each case, the other would 
not fit the time or place at all so well.* But on this matter it will be 
needless to repeat, save exceedingly briefly, what has been already said. 
We are first informed what the motive of the parable was : " He added 
and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they 
thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear" It was 
uttered then to repress impatience, to teach the need of a patient waiting 
for Christ, and not merely that, but also of an active working for him 
during the time of his absence : such was its aim as regarded those who 
had joined themselves entirely to him, and had placed themselves to him 
in the relation of servants to their Lord and Master. But he had also 
other hearers on this his last journey to Jerusalem, such as had not in- 
deed thus attached themselves to him, but a multitude drawn together by 
wonder, by curiosity, and by other mingled motives. These, though 
now having a certain good will toward Christ and his doctrine, and 
though being, so long as they were in his presence, to a considerable 
degree under his influence, yet not the less were exposed to all the evil 
influences of their age, and liable to be drawn presently into the mighty 

* Chrysostom {In Matth. Horn. 78) distinctly affirms them to be different, and 
had not Augustine believed them so, we may confidently assnme that in his work, 
De Consensu Evang., he would have sought to bring them into harmony. 



THE POUNDS. 417 

stream of hostility which was now running so fiercely and so fast against 
him : and this especially, when in his own person he was no more 
among them, when his death had seemed to belie his lofty pretensions. 
For them is meant that part of the parable (ver. 14-27) concerning the 
citizens who hated to have their countryman set over them as their king, 
and as soon as he had withdrawn from them for a while sent after him 
messages, disclaiming him for their lord, but who at his return paid the 
fearful penalties of their hatred and defiance. 

In the great Roman empire, wherein the senate of Rome, and after- 
wards its emperors, though not kings themselves, yet made and unmade 
kings, such a circumstance as that which serves for the groundwork of 
this parable can have been of no unfrequent occurrence. Thus Herod 
the Great was at first no more than a subordinate officer in Judaea,* and 
flying to Rome before Antigonus, was there declared by the senate, 
through the influence of Antony, king of the Jews. In like manner his 
son Archelaus had personally to wait upon Augustus in Rome, before 
he inherited his father's dominions, which he then did, not indeed as king, 
but only as ethnarch. History furnishes many other examples, for it 
was felt over the world, in the words of the historian of the Macca- 
bees, "whom they [the Romans] would help to a kingdom, those reign,. 
and whom again they would, they displace." (1 Mace. viii. 13.) That 
he who should thus seek and obtain a kingdom was one well-born, & 
"nobleman" is only what we should naturally expect, as it would be little 
likely that any other would lift his hopes so high, or would have such 
probability of being unable to maintain himself on his throne, as would 
render it likely that the higher authority would install him there. Nor 
is this 'circumstance without its deeper significance, for who was of such 
noble birth as he, who, even according to the flesh, came of earth's first 
blood — was the Son of Abraham, the Son of David ; who was besides 
the eternal and only-begotten Son of God? 

The kingdom which this nobleman goes to receive, can scarcely be, 
as some understand it, another kingdom, at a distance from the land of 
bis birth, but rather he goes to receive the investiture of that kingdom, 
whereof before he was only one of the more illustrious citizens, and 
which after a while he returns to reign over as its king. Either sup- 
position, it is true, would suit his case, whom this nobleman represents : 
he went to be enthroned in his heavenly state, and in heaven to rule 
over all as the Son of man (Heb. ii. 7, 8) ; thus Theophylact explains 
it. But it might with equal truth be said that he went to receive solemn 
investiture of that earthly kingdom, which he had purchased with his 
blood, and which hereafter he shall return and claim as his own, sitting 

* First Procurator ; afterwards, <T~oa.T-qybs. 
27 



118 THE POUNDS. 

on the throne of his father David ; — and the circumstances of the narra- 
tive evidently point to the last as the correcter view of the matter. It 
was not over strangers, hut over his fellow-citizens, that the nobleman 
departed to solicit a dominion — else would there be no meaning in their 
message, " We will not have this man to reign over us ;" whether these 
words imply, as generally taken, that they, hearing of his purpose to go 
and solicit the kingdom, give him notice beforehand that they will yield 
him no obedience, that however he may receive at other hands the do- 
minion over him, they will not acknowledge his rule, nor own allegi- 
ance to him, — or whether, as is more probable, it is a message, or an 
embassage rather, which they send to the court whither he has gone, to 
anticipate and counter-work him there, to declare how unwelcome his 
exaltation would be ; — " "We do not desire that this man should be made 
our king."* It was exactly thus that a faction of the Jews, in the 
case of Archelaus, sent ambassadors to the court of Augustus to accuse 
him there, and if possible to hinder his elevation over them. So again 
we find him on his return exercising kingly functions among his fellow- 
citizens — setting his servants over five cities, and over ten — having 
power of life and death, and executing extreme judgment on those that 
had refused to admit his authority. There can hardly then be a ques- 
tion but that the kingdom which he goes to receive, is not any other, 
but that very same of which he was himself originally a citizen. 

Before however he went, u he called his ten servants" or rather, ten 
servants of his,f " and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto tJiem, 
Occupy^ till I come" The sum here delivered to the servants is very 
much smaller than that which, in St. Matthew, the man who was travel- 
ling into a far country committed to his servants' keeping § This is at 
once explained, if we keep in mind how that parable was spoken to the 
apostles, who of course had received infinitely the largest gifts of any 

* The speaking of him in the third person, " this man" {tovtov), seems a strong 
•confirmation of this view, and irpe<rficta is an embassage rather than a message. 
(See Luke xiv. 32.) 

•f Besides that the original requires this, it would be absurd to suppose that, 
with the immense households of antiquity, which, as Seneca says, were nations 
rather than families (see Becker's Gallus, v. 1, p. 106), this nobleman, of con- 
sequence enough to be raised to a royal dignity, had but ten servants belonging 
to him. 

■$. TIpay/uiaTevo-acr&e, employ in trading. " Occupy" is here a Latinism. Thus, 
occupare pecuniam, because money in business, or put out to interest, does not lio 
idle, is in fact occupied or employed. So in North's Plutarch, p. 629, Phocion 
refusing Alexander's gift, says, " If I should take this sum of money and occupy it 
nob, it is as much as I had it not." 

() A talent was = £243 15s. ; a pound (mina) = £k Is. 3d. (See the Diet, of 
Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Drachma, p. 360.) 



THE POUNDS. 419 

from Christ, while this is spoken to the disciples generally, whose facul- 
ties were comparatively fewer. How remarkable is this still ministry, 
these occupations of peace in which the servants of the future king should 
be engaged, and that too while a rebellion was going on. A caviller 
remarkably enough asks, " Why did he not distribute weapons to his 
servants ? Such would have been under present circumstances the most 
natural thing to have done." Doubtless the most natural, as Peter felt 
when he cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest, as all have felt, 
who have sought to fight the world with its own weapons, and by the 
wrath of man to work the righteousness of God. Such identifying of 
the Church with a worldly kingdom has been the idea of the Papacy, 
such of the Anabaptists. Men in either case feeling strongly that there 
must be a kingdom of God, have supposed that it was immediately to 
appear (ver. 11), and that they, and not Christ himself, were to bring it 
into this outward form and subsistence — instead of seeing that their part 
was, with the still and silent occupation of their talent, to lay the rudi- 
ments of that kingdom, and so to prepare the world for its outbreaking, 
— which outbreaking should yet not actually come to pass, till the King 
returned in his glory. 

The Jews were especially Christ's fellow-" citizens" for, according to 
the flesh, he was of the seed of Abraham, a Jew and a member of the 
Jewish polity ; — and they hated him not merely in his life, and until his 
departure out of this world, but every persecution of his servants — the 
stoning of Stephen — the beheading of James — the persecutions of Paul, 
and all the wrongs which they did to his people for his name's sake, and 
because they were his, were each and all messages of defiance sent after 
aim, implicit declarations upon their part, " We will not have this man 
to reign over us." And Theophylact well observes, how twice this very 
declaration found formal utterance from their lips, — once when they 
eried to Pilate, " We have no king but Caesar :" and again, when they 
said, c: Write not, The King of the Jews." When we give this parable 
a wider range, and find the full accomplishment of all which it contains, 
not at the destruction of Jerusalem, but at the day of judgment. — and 
it is equally capable of the narrower and the wider interpretation, — then 
these rebellious citizens will no longer be merely the Jews, but all such 
evil men, as by word or deed openly deny their relation and subjection 
to Jesus, as their Lord and King (in this different from the unfaithful 
servant, for he allows the relation, and does not openly throw off the 
subjection, but yet evades the obligation by the false glosses of his own 
heart), and their message will have its full and final fulfilment in the 
great apostasy of the last days, which shall be even as this is, not an 
evading merely of the subjection due unto Christ, but a speaking of 



420 THE POUNDS. 

great things against him (Rev. xiii. 5, 6 ; Dan. vii. 25), not merely diso- 
bedience, but defiance, even such as shall not be content with resisting 
his decrees, but shall anticipate and challenge him to the conflict : " Tho 
kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, 
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, Let us break their 
bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." 

On the following verses (15-23) there is little to say which has not 
been said in another place. At his return, the nobleman distributes 
praise and rewards to them that have been faithful to him while he was' 
away, — punishments, more or less severe, to them who have abused the 
opportunity, and taken advantage of his absence.* The rewards which 
he imparts to his faithful servants, are royal, and this consistently with 
the royal dignity, with which he is now invested ; he sets them over 
cities :f while the rewards imparted were quite different in the other 
parable (Matt. xxv. 14-30) — for there the master being but a private 
man would have no such power of setting his servants in high places of 
authority. This is worthy of notice, as an example of the manner in 
which each parable is in perfect keeping and harmony with itself 
through all its minor details, which is another reason for believing them 
originally distinct from one another. The rewards too, as. they are 
kingly, so are they also proportioned to the fidelity of the servants : he 
whose pound had made five pounds was set over five cities, — he whose 

* This, of course, is borrowed from the life, and is what often must have hap- 
pened. We may compare the conduct of Alexander, rewarding ' and punishing 
after his return from his long Indian expedition, from which so many in "Western 
Asia had believed that he never would come back. (See the Bishop of St. Da- 
vid's Hist, of Greece, v. 7, p. 62, seq.) 

•f Such a method of showing grace to servants was not uncommon in the East. 
Barhebraus (quoted by Havernick, Comm. ub. Dan., p. 87) tells of a slave, who, 
giving proofs of his prudence and dexterity in business, his master, the Sultan 
Zangi, exclaimed, " It is fit to give such a man as this, command over a city," and 
at once he made him governor of the Kurisch, and sent him thither.— I cannot find 
the force in these words, "Have thou authority over ten cities, &c.," which Mr. 
Greswell does, when they supply him with a convincing argument in favor of the 
millennial views (Exp. of the Par., v. 4, p. 501), for why should this image of 
ruling over cities be interpreted literally 1 nay, being found in a parable, must it 
not be accepted as an image only, which we are not to hold fast in the letter, but, 
on the contrary, must seek to exchange for the truth which underlies if? That 
truth certainly is, that he who is faithful in a little here (and all here is little com- 
pared to what is coming), to him much will be intrusted in a future age. But- 
more than this, or what that much will be, is in no wise defined, though this, 
which Bengel notes on these <£ ten cities,'" is doubtless true: Magna rerum ampli- 
tudo ac varietas in regno Dei, quamvis nondum nobis cognita. We only know, in 
Calvin's words: Nunc tanquam absentis negotia laboriose curamus: tunc vero 
ampla et multiplex honorum copia ei ad manum suppetet, qua magnified noa 
exornet. 



THE POUNDS. 421 

pound had made ten was set over ten. . We hear nothing of the other 
seven servants, but need not therefore conclude that they had wholly 
lost or wasted the money intrusted to them ;* rather that the three who 
come forward are adduced as specimens of classes, and the rest, while 
all that we are to learn is learned from the three, for brevity's sake are 
omitted. — Those who stand by, and who are bidden to take his pound 
from the slothful servant,! and give it to him that had shown himself 
the faithfulest, or, at least, the ablest of all, are clearly the angels, who 
never fail to appear and take an active part in all scenes descriptive of 
the final judgment.^ 

When tne king has thus distributed praise and blame, rewards and 
penalties, to those who stand in the more immediate relations of ser- 
vants to him, to those of his own household, — for the Church is the 
household of G-od, — he proceeds to execute vengeance on his enemies, 
— on all who had openly cast off allegiance to him, and denied that they 
belonged to his house at all. (Prov. xx. 8.) At his command they are 
brought before him, and slain before his face ; as their guilt was greater, 
so their punishment is more terrible than that of the slothful servant. 
In the Marriage of the King's Son (Matt. xxii. 1) the vengeance on the 
open enemies goes before that on the hypocritical friend or servant ; — 



* Thus Ambrose (Ep, in Luc, 1. 8, c. 95): De aliis siletur, qui quasi prodigi 
debitores, quod acceperant, perdiderunt. 

f It is characteristic that the (rovSdpiop (sudarium) which, not exerting himself, 
this idle servant does not need for its proper use (" in the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread," Gen. iii. 19), he uses for the wrapping up of his pound. That he 
had it disengaged, and so free to be turned to this purpose, was itself a witness 
against him. 

+ Dschelaleddin, whom Von Hammer speaks of as the great religious poet of 
the modern East, has an interesting little poem resting on the same idea as that of 
the present parable, — namely, that of life with all its powers and faculties, as a 
sum of money to be laid out for God. As it is brief I will subjoin a translation, 
made, indeed, through the German. (See Ruckert's Gedichte, v. 2, p. 451.) 

O thou that art arrived in being's land, 

Nor knowest how thy coming here was planned ; 

Prom the Schah's palace to life's city, thou 

On his affairs wert sent, at his command. 

Thee thy Lord gave, thy faithfulness to prove, 

The sum of life, a capital in hand. 

Hast thou forgotten thine intrusted pound? 

Stunned with the market's hubbub dost thou standi 

Instead of dreaming, up and purchase good; 

Buy precious stones, exchange not gold for sand. 

Thou at the hour of thy return wilt see 

Thy Monarch set, with open book in hand. 

What thou from him receivedst, he will bring 

To strict account, and reckoning will demand : 

And a large blessing, or a curse from him, 

Thy faithfulness or sloth will then command. 



422 THE POUNDS. 

here it follows after. This slaying of the king's enemies in his presence 
is not to be in the interpretation mitigated or explained away, as though 
it belonged merely to the outer shell of the parable, and was only added 
because such things were done in Eastern courts (1 Sam. x. 27; xi. 
12; Jer. fiii. 10), and to add an air of truthfulness to the narrative. 
Rather it belongs also to the innermost kernel of the parable. The 
words set forth, fearfully indeed, but not in any way in which we need 
shrink from applying them to the Lord Jesus, his unmitigated wrath 
against his enemies, — but only his enemies exactly as they are enemies 
of all righteousness, — which shall be revealed in that day when grace 
shall have come to an end, and judgment without mercy will have be- 
gun.* (Rev. xiv. 10.) All this found its nearest fulfilment in the 
overthrow of Jerusalem, and in the terrible calamities which went be- 
fore and followed it : that was, without doubt, a coming of Christ to 
judgment ; but it will find its full accomplishment, when the wickedness 
of an apostate world, having come to a single head, shall in that single 
head receive its final doom. — in the final destruction of Antichrist and 
his armies. 

* Augustine often uses this and the parallel passage, Matt. xxii. 13 (as Con. 
Adv. Leg. et Proph., 1. 1, c. 16 ; Con. Faust., 1. 22, c. 14, 19), in argument with the 
Manichaeans, who, contrasting the severity of the God of the Old Testament with 
the lenity of the God of the New, would have proved that they were not, and 
could not be, one and the same. But, he replies, there is no such contrast. As 
there is love in the Old Testament, so there is fear, and that which should awaken 
fear, in the New : and he alleges the terribleness of this doom in proof. The 
Manichaeans could not betake themselves to their ordinary evasion, that the pas- 
sage was an interpolation or a corruption, as they accepted the parables (see Augus- 
tine, Con. Faust., 1. 32, c. 7) for part of the uncorrupted doctrine of Christ. — We 
may compare Heb. i. 13, " till I make thine enemies thy footstool," and we learn 
from Josh. x. 24, what the image is, that lies under these words. 



INDEX. 



A. 

*AKpoyavia?os, 175 n. 

•Aj/afSeicc, 268 n. 

AvareKKciv, 62 n. 

Ancient Christianity, &c, 83 n. 

Angels rejoicing, 315. 

Anointing of our Lord's feet, 239. 

Antichrist, 85. 

Apostasy of the heathen world, 322. 

'Ao-carus, 322 n. 

Avr6/j.aTos, 237 n. 

B. 

Baptism, 132, 135, 329. 
Bacravi<TT-f}s, 133 n. 
Bengel, 185 n., 338 n. 
Btos, 320 n. 

Byssus, 372 n. 

C. 

Calling of the Gentiles, 187. 

Characters of different Gospels marked 
in the Parables they record, 30, 31. 

Christ as the Good Shepherd — a sym- 
bol in the Early Church, 309. 

" the heir of all things," 171. 

his second coming, 208. 

Church in conflict here, 401. 

seeking her lost, 313. 

Classical phrases frequent in St, Luke, 
319 n. 

Covetousness, 274. 



Aeiirvov, 293 n. 
Denarius, 145 n. 



Ate|o5os, 186 n. 

AUaios, 131. 

Discipline in the Church, 87. 

Distortion of the Parables by the Gnos- 
tics and others, 40, &c. 

Doctrine not to be grounded on Para- 
bles, 39. 

Donatist idea of the Church, 75-77, 86, 
114. 

AovKtveiv, 340 n. 

Apiiravov, 238. 

E. 

Ecclesiastes ; a commentary on the 
Parable of the Pearl, 113 n. 

'Ek/UoAAcij' e|a> — holiness of the Catholic 
Church, 119. 

'EicXdfATreiv, 89 n. 

"Evtivfia ydfiov, 189 n. 

Envy expressed by the eye, 154 n. 

Esther's history applied, 198 n. 

'Ercupos, 153 n. 

EvAajSeta, 227 n. 



Fables, two in the Old Testament, 10 n. 
Faith— the root of Charity, 194, 248 n. 

its nature, 385. 

and works, 204. 

Feasts in the East often political, 179 n» 
Fides formata, 247. 



Galilseans, 280 n. 
ToifMov 7roi€?j>, 180 n. 
Genesareth, lake of, 58. 



424 



INDEX. 



Harmony between things seen and un- 
seen, 19-22. 

Hezekiah's reformation (2 Chron. xxx. 
10) a parallel to "The Marriage of 
the King's Son," 185 n. 

Historico-prophetic School of interpre- 
ters, 43. 

Hours of the Jews, 146 n. 

Hymn of Prudentius, 306 n. 



I. 

Interpretation of Two Parables by our 
Lord, 36. 



Judaea : its natural position, 165. 
Justin Martyr's Conversion, 105. 

K. 

KaXe7y and KXrjffis— of invitation, 293 n. 
KaTapyuv, 286 n. 
Kaixrwv, 150 n. 
Kepdnov, 324 n. 
Kc<pa\aiodv, 168 n. 



11 Laborers in the Vineyard" — Jewish 
and Mahometan Version of the Para- 
ble, 150 n. 

Lamp, small, 211 n. 

Lazarus, 373 n. 

Leaven, 97 n. 

Lenity of supposition in our Lord's 
Parables, 19o. 

ArjvSs, 165 n. 

AiKfMciy, 176 n. 

M. 

Maldonatus, 263 n. 

Mammon, 359 n. 

Man of Sin, 194. 

Marcion, 182 n. 

Men compared to trees, 285. 

Vlepifiva, 66 n. 

Mepio-TTjs, 272 n. 

McTa/ie\€ia and /xeravola, 160 n. 



Metayer system of letting Estates, 168 n, 
Midnight, Christ's second coming at, 

210. 
Millennium, 202. 

Miracles, in what like the Parables, 22. 
Mustard-tree. 92 n. 

N. 

Naboth's death a type of Christ's, 1 K £ n 

National life, 173. 

Nature's present bondage, 22. 



OIkovS/xos, 347 n. 



O. 



P. 



TlaiStov, 268 n. 

Parable : wherein it differs from (i.) 

The fable, 10. (ii.) The mythus, 12. 

(iii.) The proverb, 13. (iv.) The 

allegory, 14. 
Parables in use before our Lord's time. 

46. 
other than our Lord's, (i.) 

Jewish, 48-53, 197 n. (ii.) Christian, 

53-58. 

— acted, 29. 

the Seven of St. Matthew, xiii, 



54 : their relation, 122. 

of " The Ten Virgins " and 



" The Marriage of the King's Son,' 

their difference, 216. 

of " The Talents," and "The 



Pounds," different, 416. 

of " The Marriage of the 

King's Son," and " The Great Sup- 
per " compared, 177, 299. 

Tlapairtur^ai, 294 n. 

UapadraXaaaios— why applied to Caper* 
naum, 58 n. 

TlapaT&ej/cu, 73 n. 

Tldpeais and Htpecris, 288 n. 

Tlapoifila, 13. 

TleipdCeiP, 252 n. 

Qiuovv, 192 n. 

ipayfj.6s, 164 n. 

Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory, 15 n. 

TWeovetfa, 271 n. 

n\ouT6tj/ ds OeSv (St. Luke xii. 15), 
273 n. 



INDEX. 



425 



UovT)pov, in the Lord's Prayer, mascu- 
line, 403 n. 
Prayer, 399. 

Pro-parabola and epi-parabola, 37. 
Publicans, Z\l. 
Purgatory, 135. 
Tlvpyos, 165 n. 
Putting on Christ, 194. 

R. 

Readings of the Greek Testament : 

Matt, xviii. 28, 130 n. 

xxi. 30, 158 n. and 160. 

xxi. 44, 175 n. 

xxv 13, 215 n. 
Luke xvi. 9, 361 n. 

xviii. 14, 414 n. 
Reward, its meaning, 156 n. 
Righteousness not by the Law, 259. 



Sacraments and the Church, 261, 262. 

~2,ay4]vt], 117 n. 

Salmeron's division of a Parable, 38 n. 

Samaritans not a mingled people, 255 n. 

Hcurpos, 118 n. 

Satan and his agency progressively un- 
folded in Scripture, 79. 

14 Seventy times seven," 124. 

Siloam, 283 n. 

Sin and Suffering: their connection, 
282 n. 

Sins : whether if once forgiven they 
can return, 134. 

1,k6.v$oXov, 88 n. 

S/rijj/rj, 363 n. 

2k\t) P 6s, 227 n. 

Slaves in Antiquity, 221. 

Son of Man : force of the Name, 74. 



Standing a posture of prayer in the 

Early Church, 410. 
Story illustrative of " The Unmerciful 

Servant," 137 n. 
'Svynvpla, 254 n. 
"2vvre\eia rod alwvos, 87 n. 
Supererogation, works of, 213, 398. 
Swedenborg, 40 n. 

T. 

Talent : use of the word in English, 222 

Te\e(r<pop€?v, 65 n. 

T€kJ>v V s, 300 n. 

Tertullian, 317. 

Qr](Tavp6s, 103 n. 

TokSs, 229 n. 

Traditional sayings of our Lord, 229 n 

Tribulation : derivation of the wori ; 

64 n. 
Types = Parables, 29. 
Typical personages, 24. 



U. 



'TTroSVaTo, 336 n. 
"£ira)Trid£eiy, 403 n. 

y. 

Vintage and harvest : Bishop Horsle^* 
distinction, 87 n. 

W. 

"White Garments, 191 n. 

■Wilderness : meaning of the word in 

Scripture. 305. 
"Works, spoken of in the New Testa- 

ment, of three kinds, 285. 



Z. 



Zi£dviov, 80 n. 



THE END. 



D. Appleton dt Company's Publications. 



18 CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. 



BY 

THE REV. JAMES WHITE, 



AUTHOR OP A HISTORY OF FRANCE. 



I Vol. 12mo. Cloth. 538 pages. $1.50. 



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L Cent — The Bad Emperors. — II. The Good Emperors. — HI. Anarchy and Con- 
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— VI. Belisarius and Parses in Italy. — Settlement of the Lomhards. — Laws of Justinian. 
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— IX. Dismemberment of Charlemagne's Empire. — Danish Invasion of England. — "Weak- 
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of Improvement. — Gregory the Seventh. — First Crusade. — XIL Elevation of Learning. — 
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